Tropic of Gemini
by In.a.blue.bathrobe
Summary: He's a young philosopher with a temper, she's a small girl who sees a big future. When old ghosts and past history affect the present, can the band survive?
1. Waiting

So here we go.  
Different voices, different story, same crazy kids.  
ElleCC graciously agreed to beta this goofiness.  
I own what Stephenie doesn't.

* * *

June  
**Alice:  
**I opened my eyes and watched the sunrays creep along the wall over Jasper's bed as they furtively illuminated the Lao Tzu quote he'd written on the wall in pencil. His scribblings were all around the walls, his notebooks and even on his clothes: strange things he'd read or thought or heard and wanted to remember. Some were stacks of syllables with notes attached, others were funny things one of us had said, many were phrases of one philosopher or another. This one read:

"_Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."_

The summer dawn's fog hung low at the window, while the strange platinum light filled the room. I loved this time of day, even though I rarely saw it. I usually slept late while the boy next to me was one of the first to wake; now I watched him sleep, his face relaxed and young, lips parted and moving, as if reading the subtitled text of his dreams.

Someone closed a door somewhere in the house, and I was instantly alert, sliding from the bed on socked feet and padding to my own room; not that I really needed to feel guilty, Dad had relaxed a lot since Emmett came home from the hospital, like he didn't care anymore that Jasper and I were too close for his comfort –as long as we were home and healthy, nothing else mattered.

Comfort was no longer about whether your daughter –who you assumed was no longer a virgin, though you never extended the courtesy of asking, thank you very much, Dr. Cullen- was going to get knocked up, but more about the fact that she was alive; and alive I was, and virginal, though I planned to solve that little issue today.

Today I was seventeen, and I was going to lose my precious hymen –though I doubted there could be much of it left, with all the grinding Jazz and I had done over the last year, even though we'd mostly tried to keep a barrier of fabric between us, not that the lace and silk I wore could be considered much of a hindrance, but he insisted, and I was good with it, because he did very nice things with his fingers, but now I was done with waiting.

I'm usually good with waiting. I can wait weeks for grades on papers to come back, and months for medical test results, and even years for the bright yellow Porsche I would own someday; I knew there was a cool girl out there who would be my best friend soon and that the band would be famous and that Jasper would marry me wearing his cowboy boots, and I could be patient for all of it, but today, two things were going to happen: my twin brother was going to snap out of the self-induced martyrdom-punishment emo-bullshit he'd subjected us to over the past three weeks –even if it meant someone was going to kick his ass- and I was going to get laid.

I threw on a bathrobe and slipped downstairs to make coffee, but the warm smell wafted from the kitchen already, greeting me like family. Twin was there, and I grinned at him, and held up my index finger. He mirrored mine, and we raised two, then three, and both said, "Happy Birthday!" at the same time, the way that we did every year since we learned how to talk.

He hugged me, and passed me a mug of coffee, and handed me a brown paper bag wrapped package girded by scotch tape.

"I forgot your licorice," he said, as I tore the package, and I wrinkled my nose at him. He always bought me black licorice as a joke for every holiday, because no one else would eat it, and when you're the youngest and littlest, you learned to enjoy the candy that everyone else liked the least, except for the Christmas he'd gotten some salty leather things shaped like cats that came from Finland - they were just nasty, and I couldn't eat any of them after the first one I'd gagged one down just to be polite, while he laughed his head off at me. Once there was this really good chocolate from Sweden that had licorice caramel in the middle but Emmett ate it all.

The paper gave way to a shiny silver harmonica, with a face that was etched with the words _M. Hohner Blues Harp_. I grinned at him, and hugged him, and blew softly through it, playing a scale, and he helped me find the opening notes to "Man with a Harmonica," otherwise known as the opening of every spaghetti western in existence. Then I ran back to my room and grabbed my present for him.

He opened it, giving me a confused look at the remote controlled toy dump truck, and then rolled his eyes when he saw that it was a Volvo, like his car, but the real gift was inside: a vintage silk Hermes piano tie, utter cheesy cliché and Edward all over.

"You're up early," he said, really meaning, "Where's Jasper?"

"You have to talk to him, Twin," I said, frustrated.

My brother nodded, eyes dull, staring into his cup.

"Jazz does that, you know. He looks for things in the bottom of a mug of something," I sighed, tired of trying to mend the rift between them.

He glared and set the cup down.

"Just try, Edward. Please? For me?"

He nodded, still silent.

I began to get annoyed with him, and started feeling obnoxious, and I really wanted the iPhone that Dad and Esme were giving both of us – Em and Rose and Jazz already got theirs on their respective birthdays this year, and I was done with waiting for mine, so I grabbed the harmonica and marched through the house, picking out the notes to Happy Birthday as loud as I could, over and over until Rose opened the door to her loft room and threw a present at me, and then slammed her door closed.

I rubbed my lip where I had bruised it against the harmonica when the box hit my head, and then opened the gift, a lime green corset with matching hot pants, the cutest things ever, with teal ribbons lacing up the back of both, and I ran back upstairs and bounced on Rose's bed until she told me to fuck off.

By then everybody was awake, and Edward and I got our iPhones, and Emmett gave us both squishy ear-buds that felt better than the ones that came with the phones, and Jasper gave me a rare edition _Alice in Wonderland_ by an illustrator I love. Dad and Esme went to work, and Emmett chased me around the house with the dump truck until I stepped backwards on it and fell, spraining my wrist, so all three guys went to the drugstore in the Jeep to get a compression wrap.

I tried on my new corset and shorts, and Rose helped me with the laces in the back while we made fun of the ace bandage brigade, and then she went to go hang out with Vicki, and I waited for Jasper to come back, ice on my wrist, fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off, and even though this was the best birthday ever, I was getting impatient because I was already seventeen and ten hours old, and I still hadn't had sex yet.

**Jasper:  
** There were times when I really wished I had a dad of my own.

I never really knew Major Whitlock Hale; my father died right when I was six, and he was never on leave enough for me to have much of a lasting impression beyond a black cowboy hat and a scratchy beard that he would rub on my belly and while he blew raspberries on my skin.

Not that Carlisle Cullen wasn't a great stepfather; he let us run free as long as we got good grades and stayed relatively healthy, and I could talk to him about almost everything.

But I couldn't ask him about condoms.

I stood in front of the shelf at the drugstore, completely baffled by the huge selection of little cardboard boxes, imagining a conversation with the good doctor.

_Hey, Doc, your daughter turned seventeen today, and it's finally legal for us to have sex now, so would you mind giving me some latex advice? Lubricated or Non? Ribbed for her pleasure or mine? And is Alice allergic to spermicide?_

I sighed, and then wished I hadn't, as the woman behind the pharmacy counter turned at the noise. She glanced at me, and I looked away quickly, hoping she wouldn't ask me if I needed help. She didn't, but I could feel her amusement in her posture.

I felt stupid and young; I didn't even know what size to buy. Was I regular, large or extra large? I'd like to think I was at least large, but what if it slid off? If I bought a size too small, it might break, right? Should I buy one box of each, and try them on for fit? What if the regular was too big? What if I really had a small dick?

There are all those help books for girls, like _Everything You Need to Know about Becoming a Woman,_ or _My Little Red First Period Book, _with cute line drawings of growing boobs and thought bubbles coming out of cartoon fallopian tubes, but there were no books for guys about buying condoms.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing?!" Edward's voice dripped venom, and I spun around, shocked. He was holding a bag of licorice gumdrops in his fist so tightly that his knuckles were white and the candy was straining the bag.

I gawked at him, caught completely off guard by the anger rolling off him so thick you could see it shimmering in the air. This was a drastic change from the walking zombie he'd been since the end of May.

"Are you cheating on my sister?!" His hair was practically standing on end.

"What?!" I breathed, baffled and suddenly furious.

"Boys! Take it outside!" The pharmacist's voice icy voice cut into our heat, and Edward grabbed the front of my t-shirt and pulled me toward the door. I grabbed his wrist and twisted, the first move taught in any basic martial arts class, and by the time we were outside, I was the one dragging him. Once we hit the hot tarmac of the parking lot, I let him go.

"Edward, what the hell are you talking ab-"

The fist with bag of candy hit me between the eyes, sending lightning through my skull and gumdrops flying everywhere. I blinked twice and swung. He jerked back, and I barely grazed his chin.

"You fucking go off and sulk for three weeks-" I began, my voice all over the place, but he lashed out low, and I blocked, wrist against wrist, barely deflecting his hit on my sternum, and then bounced away from his fast left hook. Fucker was quick. I wiped the blood that was flowing down my nose, wondering if he'd broken it.

"-And the first thing you say to me is to fucking accuse me-" I tried to continue. He closed in again, and I clenched my fists tight, and blocked, twisting sideways, leaving him a free hit to my back. He didn't take it, and I spun and looked at him, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in his head.

"Alice is on the pill!" he said, his voice low and ferocious. "So the only reason you'd be buying-" He landed a good one to my ribs while my brain stalled in confusion. I sat down hard from the force of his hit, and looked up at him.

Edward's face was bright red with fury, fists hard and center of balance high in his shoulders but there was a desperation to his stance and a certain misery in his eyes that told me something else, and my anger cooled. He needed this, I realized, and it wasn't about Alice. He needed to fight, to lose himself in the feral patterns of fist and bone and blood, to punish and be punished, and because he was my best friend, I gave it to him.

Just fists, I reminded myself, as I launched up, hard and fast. I popped him in the solar plexus, and he staggered back, gasping, and then we began to dance, the age-old circling of feet and stance, weight shift and eye contact.

"She never told me she was on the pill," I said, surprised and pleased and trying to focus. He took a long step forward, and while I controlled the urge to keep from kicking his kneecap off, he grazed my jaw, taking some skin and jarring my teeth. I swung again, a solid uppercut under his chin. His feet flew out from under him, and he landed flat on his back on the hot asphalt, but with a grunt and a twist he was up again, shaking it off.

I'd slowed him down a little, and was able to block the next punch with ease, forearms shoving his fists away, but he bounced back before I could land a counter.

"So you've not yet-" He frowned, wiping sweat out of his eyes, and I snapped a quick left to his exposed side, but he was faster, and blocked down, jarring my elbow hard against the joint. That shit hurt bad and I spun away, panting and flexing my arm. He was better at this than I gave him credit for, and I loosened my fists.

"I was waiting," I said, tasting the blood from my nose as I spoke, circling around him, watching his eyes and his fists at the same time, "-until she was seventeen-" he shied left, away from my next throw - "-and legal-" he moved, an obvious fake to left, but his footing was messed up and I blocked it easily, "-out of respect for her dickhead brother!" I struck out and up, a square punch between the eyes, same as he hit me, but he flinched a bit and I caught him solid in the left eye. He dropped hard, and I fought to keep my balance, but my shoe was caught on something and I fell on top of him.

He shoved me off, groaning, and I rolled partially away, panting for breath on the blistering concrete, hoping we were done. My ribs ached and my arm hurt and my brain felt loose in my skull; if Edward learned tiger fighting forms, he'd be lethal.

I wiped my face on my arm and opened my eyes to Emmett's hulking form staring down at me, mouth and eyes wide with laughter. I flipped him the bird.

"Jazz," Edward's voice was filled with pain and confusion. "Dude, I'm stuck."

I tried to roll over, thinking that he wasn't usually that introspective, but my something sticky dragged at my hair. The smell of licorice rose from the asphalt, and I slowly tugged my head out of the melted candy goo on the ground.

Emmett doubled over, huge guffaws that could be heard for miles, which only got louder at the squelched siren approach of Forks' finest.

"Alice is going to kill both of you," he said in between howls.

**Alice:  
** I lay in the dark at Jasper's side, listening to Joni Mitchell's "Blue" with volume low, trying not to think, not to feel, not to cry, because he would hear me and wake up and then know that this was the worst birthday ever. Not that I expected losing my virginity would be all roses without thorns; even at fourteen, sneaking off to read the stupid romance novels where the handsome knight "teased away the sacred veil of her maidenhood with a gentle thrust," I knew there was supposed to be a little pain. I just didn't expect it to hurt that much, and in the dumb books the gorgeous soldier/lord/vampire never shouts "Oh, shit, hold still!" upon first entry and promptly unloads more spooge than he's dumped in the last nine months of resolved foreplay combined.

And that stuff _burns!_ The books don't say anything about him giving her road-rash on her more delicate bits, and then slathering them with sticky gunk that I'd never noticed was as caustic as lye with wasabi sauce on top. And I tried not to cry, but Jazz knew anyway, and ran me a bath and was sweet and called me beautiful, even though my lip was swollen from where Rosalie threw the box, and he apologized a million times.

I wanted to tell him it was okay, that it was supposed to hurt and be over quick and I wasn't one of those silly girls who wanted the romance story, but I mentally swore at every chick flick and fairytale where the people always had perfect sex and never have morning breath or have their period, and I cursed my oldest brother while I was at it.

I was _still_ pretty pissed at Emmett for bringing my boyfriend home all bruised up with cotton up his nose and Edward with a black eye and gooey candy imbued in both their scalps that took two hours to comb out even after soaking it in conditioner, because I wouldn't let either of them shave their heads, and of course this takes place after they have to cut me out of the hot pants Rosalie laced me into. They'd spent two hours at the drugstore washing the damned gumdrops off the parking lot so that they wouldn't get charged with stealing them in the first place, and I was at home locked in the lace-up shorts like a chastity belt and no way to get out of them to pee. I'd tried to undo them myself, but the ribbon got knotted, and of course I couldn't turn around that far to see what I'm doing, and then when I tried to cut the ribbons, I gouged myself in the back because I couldn't hold the scissors properly with a sprained wrist.

But it's hard to be mad at Emmett, especially when he looked so apologetic and scared of me, and Jasper and Edward were laughing and talking to each other and back to normal, even though they looked like drowned highway hamburger.

I lay in the dark, grinning, trying not to laugh out loud, and then I heard a sigh of relief, and I realized Jasper had been awake this whole time, and he rolled over and suddenly we were both giggling, and then he was kissing me, whisper light butterfly kisses, air and mint and laughter, on my throat and across my breasts and lower, and then lower still.

My hands slid into his curls as his hair tickled my inner thighs, soft and feathery, and everything was breathless and tantalizing but then his mouth shaped to me, slippery lips on slick swollen flesh, warm and wet and shockingly good, and I gasped for air like a fish on land, twisting with need, frantic, and then he moved over me and thrust his tongue in my mouth in warning. He was in, then, pushing past the ache and soothing it with a slow slide, and I felt full and right and very female, and I laughed and wrapped my arms and legs around him and arched to pull him deep, and then I was the one coming too quickly, and I whimpered in protest but my body took over, sucking at his shape, and wave after wave of bliss crashed over my skin, shaking my bones.

"Oh, wow," he whispered, staring wide into my eyes as I contracted around him, and I smiled, limp and languid under his weight. He lurched up and thrust into me three times quickly, and then pulled out with a gasp, body shuddering with each spasm. I caught it on my belly, and then in my palms, because I liked the feel of him in my hands when he came, tip flared and hot and wet and primal.

He rolled over and mopped me up, still wide-eyed, and I was waiting for him to say something clever, but he just grinned and looked extremely pleased with himself, and whispered, "Happy Birthday," and it was.

* * *

How old were you that first time?


	2. Aside with a Wolf

Yes, last chapter was before Bella showed up in ToV; sorry for the confusion. **You may have already read this chapter –I posted it for the 'Love of Jasper' contest.** I've added a few details, but it won't hurt plot-wise if you wish to skip it.  
Most of us lost our V-card in high school, some earlier, some later, almost all of us felt that practice makes perfect. I was 17, and still smile thinking about it.  
AccioBourbon and ElleCC beta'ed this.  
Stephenie owns what I don't.

* * *

November  
**Jasper:  
** I watched the crowd swirling around the girl who had just come off the stage, the mob enthusiasm high but with a touch of hunger that could swing to mean if it wasn't fed. The masses parted a little, grudgingly, for the ugly guitar player who came from backstage. He'd put his shirt back on, and was moving toward the brunette he'd just performed with. There was no menace in his bearing, and I realized he had no clue yet as to how stupid she had made him seem.

With her usual artless flair, Bella had managed to win the crowd and make him look like an utter fuckstick, while singing effortlessly. I wondered how James would take it, once he saw a video of the song. Angela Webber would have it edited and posted to YouTube in under five minutes; her video blog had a good following, and his ego would be glued to the first phone that could download it. Would he brush off the criticism as a planned comedy act? Would he turn on Bella?

I watched the mass of people. There were two small groups standing apart from the throng down by the stage. The Quileute Wolves were looking at their former guitarist with a joint expression of disgust, and my stepbrother was talking to his father and Lauren Mallory; his body was arched with enough tension to shoot crossbow bolts. He moved away from the crowd, and I fell into step next to him.

"What's up, Bro?" I asked.

"James laced a drink meant for Bella, to get her on stage." Edward was so angry his voice was shaking.

I said something sympathetic, but the wheels were turning in my brain, pondering earlier suspicions. James was friendly enough, but he'd moved desperately fast, roping Bella into performing with him when it was obvious to anyone that she and Edward were involved.

Edward threatened James's hands, dire words from one musician to another, and then asked if my sister might know more about the guitarist's drug habits. Rose was close to Victoria, James's girlfriend, but my taciturn sister did not make friends easily, and I didn't want to stir up any shit between them without sure cause.

I scanned the edges of the crowd again, and Sam gave me a nose nod. He casually moved away from Jake Black and his band. I told Edward I'd be right back, and moved back up the aisles, angling away from everyone. The Q'wolves drummer joined me after a second.

"Hale," he said, amused with his usual greeting.

"Uley," I replied, looking the Native American man in the eye. He was as tall as I, but three years older, and the age difference could make me feel edgy when I dealt with him.

"She's good," he said gesturing toward Bella with his lit cigarette.

"Yes." I waited, playing his game, knowing that he didn't invite me to talk just to compliment Edward's girlfriend.

"She keeps dangerous company." His eyes were trained on James.

"You didn't throw him out for musical differences, then?" I asked.

He frowned, making me feel young, and considered me for a moment. "He was dealing on the Res, man."

"Didn't like the competition?" I grinned, not wanting to let the guy get under my skin, but then I realized what he was saying. "Hard stuff?"

"Pharmaceuticals. His guitar case is probably full of the shit."

I stared at him. He stared back, the hint of a smile twisting his fleshy mouth, and his eyes flicked to Charlie Swan and back to me. The anticipation was rolling off his skin in waves, though his face was serene.

"You want him busted," I realized. "You want him taken down here, rather than at home."

Sam said nothing, just tossed his cigarette butt into the grass at the edge of the amphitheatre. It was still smoldering, and I stepped on it, irritated that he would be so careless, but he just shrugged, and waited.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and thumbed over the screen: _**J was kicked out of Qwolves for dealing pills. Tell them to look in his guitar case. **_

I tilted the phone so Sam could see, and at his nod, I sent the text to Edward.

Then a thought occurred to me. "Won't he rat you out for a lesser charge or something?"

Sam seemed confident, and I knew he wouldn't have had me pass on the information if there was any risk to himself, but I was curious.

"Never trusted him enough to do business with him," he said, and finally smiled at me. I smiled back, taking the sideways compliment for what it was.

"How did you find out?"

"Quil. He and his buds were doing some adolescent spirit quest shit, and James started talking about how he could 'augment the experience.' Seth wound up in the emergency room in Forks, tripping so hard his ears were bleeding. He nearly died, man."

"I remember Carlisle talking about that."

"Yeah, Dr. Cullen raised hell and bitched Billy out." Sam snorted. "Like the elders would let anyone do that crap unguided."

"I thought you believed in 'that crap.'"

"Actually, I do. I'm just uncomfortable with perpetuating the stereotype."

"You write lyrics about it," I challenged.

"Music is different. Music preserves history and keeps the mythos alive." His eyes drifted into the crowd, and followed a petite form in a brightly colored dress, as she wandered off toward the food vendors. "And vision knows no race. We may know some methods of making the way easier, but the farthest seeing person I ever met isn't Indian."

His gaze lingered too long on Alice, not that I could blame him. She was wearing boots that went over her knees, and the fabric of her short dress moved over her ass nicely as she walked. Too nicely.

I glared at him, clamping down on my irritation, flexing my hands to counter the instant tension in my fists.

"Old Quil would love to meet her," he said, his tone and expression mild. "She might get a kick out of it, too."

"No."

There was no way in hell I was going to let Alice go on some kind of vision journey with the crazy old tribal elder. Her head was complicated enough without some medicine man stirring around in it. Luckily, Carlisle had raised such a shit-stink at the reservation that the Cullens had been asked to keep off the land, and Alice had taken it to heart.

"You make her choices for her?" He was still staring at my girlfriend, and I didn't like the amusement and proprietary nature of his expression, like he knew a secret that I did not.

"On occasion," I said, through clenched teeth, forcing my vocal cords to remain steady. I looked at the older boy pointedly, until he met my eyes.

"Hey." He smiled, condescending enough to bait me further. "I'm just enjoying the scenery, man."

I said nothing, inhaling through my nose and out again, letting the antagonism fade with the fresh oxygen. Alice could take care of herself, looks to the contrary, and she loved _me_, for some unfathomable reason.

"Esme ready to harvest, yet?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Not for a month yet, at least."

"Need anything to tide you over?"

"I'd take an eighth, if you've got it."

He nodded. "I'll call you when we get home from this thing."

"Cool. Hey, you guys were really good earlier."

He grinned at me. "They're a good pack of kids."

He was right to be proud of them. Their sound was unique, and the judges had liked them. I'd buy their CD, I thought philosophically. I grinned back and moved away, not wanting to draw more attention to our conversation. The mob down at the stage was starting to dissipate, and I couldn't see Edward through the people drifting up the aisle.

I spotted Emmett's face above the crowd at a food stall, near my sister's blond head, and texted Edward to meet me over there.

"Hale," Sam Uley called back, voice pitched low under the crowd, "Don't underestimate Victoria."

I turned back to him, to ask him what he meant. He was watching the redhead standing next to his former guitarist.

"Fuck me!" Jacob Black's surprised oath drew our attention.

Two police officers, one with a large dog on a leash, were heading straight toward James. He was oblivious to them, but his girlfriend was looking at their approach in horror.

The German shepherd barked, and James blanched, and Victoria scanned the throng of people, strange dark eyes clashing with mine. Was she looking for Rosalie? Then she backed into the crowd, disappearing, like an extinguished match flame.

The arrest happened very quickly; the cops were almost discreet in their efficiency.

"That was quick," Sam said, with a satisfied smile.

"Man, that sucks!" Jacob Black's voice was dejected. "Now Bella won't get to sing!"

"She's the only one so far who could beat us, Jake, and now they're out."

The young guitarist looked at his leader uncertainly, and something cold settled on top of the knot of hunger in my stomach. I walked down toward my family, wondering if Edward had even thought about the ramifications of James getting busted.

I hadn't.

**Alice  
**He said it.

My jaded, emotionally retarded, seventeen-minutes-older-than-me brother had finally said he was in love with someone. And she was fabulous to the point that I might worry that I had latent les urges, except that I liked penises too much; just one penis, really, because I'd only met one personally. And shouldn't the plural of penis be 'penii'?

Although, keeping my best friend out of trouble was rather a full time job; for someone who was so smart and perceptive, she had no self-awareness whatsoever. Bella stumbled around in her own world of music and words, wild and shy, bursting out of the shadows with some snarky phrase or sex-starved look, only to retreat again, tangled in her own feet, with no idea how alluring and fey she really was. And my brother had met his match, his dark charisma drawing her out while she bound him in some magic spell, like Odysseus and his siren.

I smiled to myself, and blew through the bubble wand, watching the iridescent orbs fly up into the night, imagining each filled with my thoughts, carrying them up into the ether.

_I did it, Mom. Edward was the last, and he fought it like hell, but you'd really like her._

My mother, in her final hour, had called me to her side, and we'd fixed the scarf around her head, and she told me that Cullen men were made to love, and that I couldn't let them forget how - not that Edward had ever known, at that point, being twelve, though Emmett was barely a year older and crushed on anything that had even the remotest beginnings of breasts.

Three years later, the Hales moved back to town, and by the next spring we're an X-rated version of the Brady bunch, which Dad justifies with medical theories about inherited traits and pheromone receptors, and Esme says something about matching needs and psyche, but it works for all of us, except Twin, because there is no Baby Sister Hale, although Bella may as well have been. Her mother and Esme knew each other when they were our age; I wonder if Renee has Esme's ability to blend hippy-chick vintage fashion with Chanel, I swear the woman would smoke joints in an Audrey Hepburn cigarette holder and gloves, if given the chance.

My stepmother and my best friend were down talking to the judges, and it had taken all my resolve and Jasper's hand on my wrist to keep me from begging to go down with them, so I could hear what was going on. Rose had left a while ago, and Edward a few minutes after her, and I was putting on a decent show of patience, at least for me. Jasper was writing a harmony on top of one of Edward's new songs, scribbling chorus phrases on his jeans, and Emmett was flipping cards in his hands.

"What are you playing?" Ben Cheney asked him. Angela followed behind, smiling at me, and popped a bubble that flew past her nose, then grimaced and polished the soap mist off her chic little glasses.

"Just counting. The next will be a red card. Only a one in five chance of it being a face, but it won't be a two." His giant hands moved imperceptibly, and a seven of hearts lay face up.

"Remind me not to play poker with you!" Ben laughed. Jasper chuckled beside me. We were all a fair match at cards, except for Rose, who refused to play with us. Jazz and Edward played the people, Em played the numbers, and I was just a good guesser.

"The next card will be the jack of spades," Angela said.

"_Oh, you jack of diamonds, oh, you jack of spades, if I'd have seen both your faces, I'd have turned and walked away…"_ I crooned, quoting my favorite Joe Dolce song, and Jasper shushed me, stroking a finger down my back without looking up from his sheet music, and I shushed, because the judges asked us not to play music while we waited, and shivered at his touch, or maybe the air, because it was starting to get chilly.

"Not likely," said my brother. "I've flipped most of the black faces already, so the odds are slim."

"Well, we only have two options, one being that it is the jack of spades, and the other being that it isn't, right? So we've a fifty-fifty chance of it being the jack," she explained.

"Oooh, that's dirty logic," approved Ben, and kissed her. She giggled and pressed against him.

"Geek foreplay," whispered Jazz.

I grinned, but before Em flipped the card, I spotted Esme and Bella coming back toward us, and the Grateful Dead-ish festival director called our attention and announced the finalists for tomorrow's concert. The line-up couldn't have been more perfect, and Edward and Rosalie joined us as we were celebrating. Siobhan congratulated me like I was her equal, even though I'm thirty years younger than she, which was cool, because I like her a lot, and Sam Uley bent down and kissed my cheek and shook Rose's hand, which made me a little mad, but Jasper grabbed me and spun me away from him before I could pat Sam on the head like a dog - to get back at him for treating me like I was a child just because I'm little - and of course I forgot everything else when Jazz kissed me, hard, like he was showing off to the world how much I belonged to him, and I didn't mind because his mouth tasted of smoky caramel and salt and his hand brushed my cheek almost as if he was wiping away the print of Sam's lips on my face, and I laughed and threw my arms around him and he picked me up and spun again until I was worried that my dress would flare out too much and show off my ass to the entire world.

Then the Jerry-Garcia-trying-too-hard in the hideous sweater cleared his throat and said something embarrassing about keeping the public displays to a PG level, into the effing microphone, and Jasper froze up as everyone looked at us, and for some reason he was really mad, but I waved, and everyone laughed and I climbed off him and held his hands in mine to keep him from flipping the bird, though he could break away if he had really wanted, but he let me tame him, and I made a big show of kissing him chastely on the cheek, and the crowd laughed harder and the annoying hippie dude murmured his approval.

And it was all good, I can look so cute I'm a damned Norman Rockwell painting, but later, when we were in the shadows of the parking lot, loading the last of the equipment into the car, Jazz grabbed me and pressed his face into my neck and whispered something that sounded like, "Dammit," and then, "Thank you."

I kissed him then, and stroked his hair from his face, because his blond waves had gotten too long, but not long enough to tie back yet, and I needed to see his eyes. The usual ice blue sparked red with reflections of departing tail lights, and I shivered at the strangeness of it, that he could be so golden and gorgeous and so dark at the same time.

I kissed him again, lingering, and he leaned in for a second, but then groaned and pulled away.

"Don't," he whispered. "I'm too…" He stopped, and looked away, and even in the darkness I could see how tense his muscles were under his shirt.

I was sort of at a loss for what to do with him, or how to make him find his usual balance, other than drag him deeper into the night and undo his pants, which was really tempting, but then they would come looking for us, and we'd get caught with me on my knees and his erection in my mouth, because he did have a nice one going on, and I really wanted to taste it. Dad would have a fit, like he doesn't get all nasty with Esme every night, you can hear the floor shake if you stand in the kitchen at the wrong time and then we'd fight and he'd threaten to send me off to London again and Jasper would break something and-

Over his shoulder my eyes flicked to Edward's, and he read my plea for help, and reminded Jazz that we need to get batteries for the mic packs and Carlisle wanted some stuff for his medical bag, which is really a black bowling ball bag that my mother got him, but that's Dad, and my irate boyfriend calmed down, and the guys all left together, which was nice, because the atmosphere between all of us was potent and weird, and I figured they needed to vent and pound their chests or tell dick jokes or something before they exploded.

On the ride to the hotel, Esme asked me how Jasper was doing, and though I shouldn't have been surprised at her perception or her concern, I couldn't find the right words to describe his mood.

"He's being all…" I started. What? What do you call it when your boyfriend of two years suddenly decides to mark his turf and kiss you so explicitly in public that he might as well be branding your chest with his name? You call it really sexy, that's what.

"Mannish." Rosalie's voice rang with amusement, finishing my sentence.

"Edward would not let me be alone for a second. He even stood outside the bathroom door when I had to pee again," Bella complained in a whisper.

"Well, that's understandable. This evening wasn't all that easy on him, either," Esme said, from the driver's seat. "Come to think of it, Carlisle got a bit conservative, himself."

"Dad?" I giggled. "What happened?"

"Well, I bumped Billy Black's chair and he was a little rude in return, and your dad, well, he did get a bit 'mannish.'" Her voice had a smug tone that had nothing to do with our family feud with the Blacks. The thought of my laid-back to the point of being negligent father acting possessive toward his wife was funny, and my amusement was doubled by Rosalie's snort.

"Emmett, too?" I asked, incredulous.

"Santiago," she explained, nodding, and we all burst out giggling because even though the drummer for the Volturi Guard was hot as hell, with fabulous dark looks that got him celebrity milk and jeans ads in magazines the second their CD hit the stores, he was short, like not much taller than Bella short, and Rose in heels was six-foot-three. Santiago was funny, though, and a great dancer, and Emmett hated him with a passion that he tried to pass off as professional criticism that we all knew was really just plain jealously, because the little drummer had often shown an over-appreciation for tall women, in particular one blond who happened to play a red guitar, and was sitting next to my stepmother at the moment.

"What are we going to do with them?" I asked, after I caught my breath.

"Love them," said Esme, grinning. "What else can we do?"

**Jasper:  
** "Hey, so what did the elephant say to the naked man?" Edward asked as we headed off to the electronics department of the all-night superstore.

"What?" I asked, not amused yet. That he was trying to tell jokes to lighten the mood, usually my job, made clear how much I was broadcasting my pisstivity.

"'How do you eat peanuts with that thing?'" he finished, and Emmett bounced an air rim shot for punctuation.

"You told it wrong, Bro," he said. "It goes: What did Emmett say to the naked man?"

"You eat peanuts with your dick, man?" I asked him. "That's disgusting."

We laughed, and I swept all the packages of high-end electronic device AA batteries into the cart.

"Do we need all those?" asked my giant stepbrother.

"No," Edward said with an evil grin, catching on quick, "but other people might."

"We're giving people batteries?" Emmett had a good soul.

"No," I said, my voice flat, but my mood had improved.

"Ah." The big guy smiled, finally understanding.

"So what's got your boxers in a wad?" Edward asked me.

"The girls, man. It's hard, you know, sharing them with the audience, watching everyone act like they are public property. Everyone hugging and crap. Fucking Sam Uley kissed Alice!" I let loose, finally voicing my frustration.

My girlfriend's two brothers stopped short.

"He's engaged to Emily Young, isn't he?" asked Edward, mildly offended. I wondered if he was more annoyed that Sam was sniffing around his sister or that he was playing lightly with his fiancée's vows.

"That doesn't mean anything," said Emmett. "Santiago's fucking married! It doesn't stop him from shoving his nose into Rose's tits!"

"What?" I asked, doubly irritated. Not that Rosalie couldn't handle herself; she was almost as tall as I was, but she's my _sister_, dammit, and I'm supposed to protect her from that shit.

"Guys, chill out." Edward's condescending tone pissed me off even further.

"Oh, so you are absolutely sure that James won't get out on a technicality and demand to be allowed on stage tomorrow?" I goaded him.

"Charlie Swan would not let that happen," he replied, but his jaw was tense, and I was pleased I had gotten under his skin. "She's not singing with anyone else but me. Period."

"Gentlemen. Let's not work ourselves into a frenzy. We're all going to have to get used to the attention if you intend to do this." The light voice behind us spoke in a soothing tone, and I turned to gape at my stepfather. "Trust your girls. In fact, why don't we get back to them?"

We were silent on the short trip back to the hotel. Carlisle stopped at the private room next to our suite, pointedly hung the "do not disturb" tag on the door knob, and said goodnight.

Emmett snaked a hand out in passing and flipped it over to the "please make up room" side.

Alice was not in our room or in the main part of the suite. I stalked to Rosalie's room, but the three of them were in Bella's room, sprawled on the bed, asleep with the TV on. Rose woke when I entered, and left. Alice was out cold, curled up with her little round ass in the air, and so I smacked it and scooped her up over my shoulder and took her to our bed where she belonged. Her dress slid over her back, and I was distracted from my slapping by the lace that slid into the crack at the base of her spine, so I followed it with my fingertips while she squirmed and made it difficult to get through the door. I dumped her on the bed and watched her bounce.

She scrambled up on her feet and jumped on the bed with her arms spread wide, then stopped and dropped to her knees and rubbed her ass where I'd spanked it.

"That still stings!" Her voice was full of laughter. "Hi. I missed you. Everything was so crazy and hurry up and wait, all day long. I talked to Siobhan and she said to be sure to ask for a smart-light follow-spot when we talk to the tech designers. I can clip on a sensor and a light will automatically track me when I dance. I don't think I want to play guitar tomorrow, if that's okay. I just want to play harmonica and sing - that way I can support Bella if she needs me."

She paused for air, and looked at me uncertainly, trying to gauge my mood. She flashed me a tentative smile.

"I've only kissed you four times today," she said, and pulled her dress off in one fluid motion, further illustrating why I adored her. She could have anyone in the world, and I was the only one she wanted. Her desire was pure and simple and confident, and it was all for me.

The ridiculously feminine purple lace bra and underwear, with the little bows everywhere, helped, too.

"You," I said, trying to voice my frustration with this day, "are mine."

"Yes." She held very still, wary and strangely silent, but her hazel eyes were wide and soft. She reached to the bow between her breasts, but I moved quickly and grabbed her wrist.

"I'm the only one who unties that," I whispered, but instead I pulled the lace fabric down under her curves, pushing them higher and framing them. Her nipples hardened prettily, and I brushed my fingers over them, admiring the adjustment to her outfit. I made an adjustment of my own, loosening the first two buttons of my jeans in the process.

"These, too?" she asked, sliding her fingertips over the bows at her hips that held the lace between her legs. Her voice was whispery, not provoking, somehow sympathizing with my mood, and her willingness to submit to my mental state both calmed my ferocity and increased my desire.

"Yeah." I slid my palm between her legs, pushing the fabric into her folds, marveling at how wet she already was for me.

She reached for me, and smoothed back my hair from my face, and kissed my neck and my jaw while whispering about loving me and needing my hands on her skin and something about wanting to go down on me in the parking lot earlier - hot little longing Alice words that swelled my ego and my cock, making me marvel that someone so incredibly sexy could want me this much. I wanted to hear more, but if I didn't at least get my lips on hers I was going to throw her down and maul her, so I stopped her words, but her mouth was also really wet and heated and made me crazier.

I made short work of my clothes and took longer with hers, untying the three ridiculous bows with my teeth, while working her with my fingers until she writhed in my lap, and then I pulled her legs around to straddle me and slid inside, groaning at the slick tight fit and her gasps.

She wrapped her arms and legs around my body and clung to me, breasts soft on my chest and teeth hard on my shoulder, tiny body taking me impossibly deep, and I scooped her ass in my palms and worked her onto me, gently at first until she begged for more, her wanting cries lashing my straining cock as much as her slippery flesh, until she tensed and sighed and shook in my arms and I joined her, mindless with the pleasure she gave me.

"Better?" she asked after a while, curling into the pillows.

I nodded, and stroked her back until she drifted off. I pulled the sheet over her sleeping skin, and brushed my lips over her cheek. Her skin was still pinked from our exertion, and she smiled slightly at my touch. I wondered, as always, what went on in her head while she slept. Did her frenetic thoughts finally slow and meander as her body relaxed, or did they run free and unstructured, like she did when she danced?

She was amazing, my other half who managed to tame me with a smile, while making me feel stronger, even as she gentled me.

She also didn't like me smoking cigarettes, and while I didn't hide the fact that I occasionally smoked a menthol when stronger stuff wasn't available, I rarely did so in front of her. I pulled my clothes back on, and grabbed a room card and my cigs.

I walked to the end of the hall, flipping the sign on my parents' door back over as I passed, and walked up the emergency stairs to the roof. I kicked off my boots, jammed one in the door to keep it from locking behind me, and sat at the little wire table that was littered with filters and an overflowing ashtray.

The smoke burned its way down, and the nicotine curled through my brain.

This evening had been a strange trip through a carnival fun house, and though the end result couldn't have been better, the events getting us there seemed like a warped reality.

Sam Uley had used me, on many levels, and I was annoyed with myself for not seeing the bigger picture. I had been his pawn in a game, and even though I had what I wanted and more, I didn't like being played.

He had passed on the information about James at the festival deliberately, not just to keep a drug bust off his home turf, but also with the intent to knock Bella out of the competition. He had let me be the one to tell Edward about James, instead of coming forward to Chief Swan on his own, so we would take the blame should Bella have been disqualified.

He baited me with that kiss on Alice, knowing I would lose my cool; my macking on her so publicly was rash, and hurt our chances of winning. The Festival would not endorse a band that couldn't maintain a reasonably clean cut image.

He'd also thrown the proverbial ball into my court, in telling me that the incident that sparked my stepfather's ire was not about the tribal medicine Carlisle spoke so vehemently against, rather than telling the truth himself.

I could do it, I mused. I could mend the rift between Carlisle and Billy Black and the Quileute elders, and perhaps for Bella and Charlie Swan, I should. Leah and Rosalie might hit off a friendship, and Alice would love the beach parties at La Push.

But Gandhi said: _"__The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted," _and my thoughts drifted to the way Sam had looked at my girlfriend's ass, as if it were an apple ready for his picking, and I decided to let the feud stand, for now.

I blew a last smoke ring toward the stars, stubbed out the cigarette, and headed back down to my sleeping family. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

* * *

What did you think of the movie?


	3. Basket Weave

Most of us enjoyed the second movie much more than the first. I particularly liked the sea of red emperor's guard cloaks. Oh. Wait. Never mind.  
ElleCC beta'ed this. She also started a new thread on the T' AU/AH forums. There will be Jaspers!  
Stephenie owns what I do not.

* * *

December  
**Alice:  
**I tied up the pink cellophane bag of chocolate M&M's with a brighter pink ribbon, and stashed it in the next basket. This one had a bathing theme: pink towels, pink washcloths, rose-scented soap and a bath-brush with a pink tie on the handle, and I liked this one, soft things with immediate use; the Christmas themed one bothered me, its cherry gingerbread house and fuchsia Santa stocking somehow garish, and I worried that it wouldn't be sent to someone still healthy enough to be excited by the holidays, but then I reminded myself that Esme had been doing this for years - she knew what she was doing. I wound the wire of a silk orchid into the handle of the maple wood basket, my stepmother's signature motif.

Jasper and Edward banged through the house, carrying boxes of liquor bottles from Esme's minivan and unloaded them onto the wet bar in the dining room where I was filling baskets. Jasper kissed me between my shoulder blades as he passed for a second trip, and I giggled, both at his cold face on my skin and at my twin brother, who was trying to hide a bottle of Lemoncello in his inner jacket pocket. The bottle was too long, so he tried to shove it down his pants, but then the glass neck and foil covered cap poked out of his waistband and looked obscene, so I held out my hand, and he sighed and retrieved the bottle.

"Isn't it supposed to be chilled?" I asked.

"Yeah, but the bar fridge is full of wine and if I stash it in the kitchen, Esme will find it and make frosting with it!" he huffed.

"Hmm," I said, and wrapped it in the paper bag that the pink rose-scented candles had come in, and handed it back to him. "There, now Esme won't find it, and even if she does, there will be enough left to make several lemon shots for Bella. When are you going to go get her? I need to do her hair before everyone gets here, and then we have to set up the equipment, and you have to mix up several batches of that pink punch drink you decided on, because you can let Dad pour, but he sure as hell shouldn't mix; remember what happened last time? I thought Heidi was going to spew all over the bar-top! Midori and tequila? What was he thinking?"

My brother raised an eyebrow at me, looking a lot like our father for a second, and I stopped talking before he told me to breathe, and I did breathe, a long deep breath before the tension got the better of me and I started babbling complete inanities, and wished Jasper was in the room to say some Jasper-thing to make me laugh.

"It's just a benefit function, Alice. The same one she throws twice a year. Nothing has changed. Not the house, not the people coming, and you are the same person you were yesterday."

"I know," I whispered.

"Then have fun tonight," he said, after giving me a quick hug. "We'll eat good food, play a little music, make fun of the Forks upper crust, and get trashed when everyone leaves."

He took the bottle into the kitchen, and I heard him ask Esme if he needed to stop and get anything when he picked up Bella, but she had already sent Emmett out for more bags of ice.

I started on another basket. This one had candles and a chenille lap blanket and three Chicken Soup books, and chocolate. Always chocolate, and sugarless gum and pink and more pink. I wondered who would get this one; it would be good for Chelsea Afton's neighbor whose name I could never recall, but it began with an "S"- Sally or Sarah, or something simple that made me feel guilty for not remembering. I could never manage to memorize the names of the soft ones, the ones who thanked you, and asked after your stepmother and patted your hand, and tried to keep up appearances that they were fine.

Ms. Verner I could remember; she was my chemistry teacher's sister and her name was Mildred, which was an awful name for anyone born before 1887, and she was mean and funny and swore, and said ribald things about my father, and didn't wear a wig, just a scarf around her head, and once I saw her in the hospital when I was helping dad, she'd come in for her chemo treatments and she'd duct taped a pink bow on her scalp. The nurses didn't like her because she terrified the people who like to pretend everything is fine, and she scared me, too, but I thought she was fabulous.

I put another lap blanket in a basket for her, and a book of Sudoku puzzles and a pink pen, because she seemed like she would not be the kind of person to do them in pencil, and some unscented hand lotion and slipper socks without much pink on them, and some chap stick, and of course chocolate, and gum and pink cough drops and more and more pink. After thinking about it for a second, I snagged a CD out of my bag, and taped it closed, making sure to leave a folded tab so it was easy to open. The cover art was a photo collage of us all standing in grass, manip'ed to make us look like a sort of human Stonehenge, with the words "Songs for Elizabeth" in a font that looked a bit like Nordic runes.

"Is that for Millie V.?" Jasper slid his cold hands under my shirt, making me squeak and shiver.

"Yeah." I leaned back into him, and he enveloped me, long arms around my shoulders, crossing over my chest and hands moving slowly down my sides to soothe me, nuzzling his face into my neck, and I smelled his hair, clean and shampoo-y and nag-champa incense and Jazz, and I smiled, because he just simply made everything okay.

"Here, do this." He pulled the puzzle book out of the basket and exchanged it for an origami kit. "She's more of an artsy person than a puzzle-doer, and she'll dig all the fancy paper. Give the Sudoku to Mrs. Randal, along with the cat calendar."

"How many does she have, now?"

"Well, 'Jennyanydots' passed on last month, at the extremely ripe feline age of seventeen. Can I stress the word _ripe?_" He shuddered. "So she got two kittens to replace her. She's going to yell at me if I can't remember their names; Mungo and Jerry, maybe? So I think that makes seven."

"So what's going to happen to them when…" I didn't finish. I grabbed up a basket, and shoved the puzzle book and the calendar and some fancy tea towels and a pink mug and a box of Earl Grey into it, and then threw in a bag of chocolate and some butterscotch and pink and pink and pink, but Jasper grabbed my hands.

"They're going to keep her company for many years, Alice, clawing and shedding and kicking shit berries out of their litter boxes as always. There's a whole lot of life left in Mrs. Randall, trust me."

He took the things I lumped in the basket out and tried to put them back in some decorative fashion that was equally as chaotic, so I started over, smiling.

"You worry too much, darl." His breath was warm in my ear, and his lips moving against my skin made me gasp as my nipples tightened against the rough side of the satin bra I was wearing, and I wondered why they didn't make them with the smooth side on the inside, because that would just feel heavenly, and he chuckled deep in his throat, voice dropping to the rough bass that vibrated down my neck and pooled in my stomach, and I smacked at the hands that were sliding up my sides, irritated at his satisfaction at being able to make me respond so instantly.

I shooed him off before I lost it completely and hopped up on the table and spread my legs for him, telling him to set up the equipment around the piano in the great room. I finished up the last two baskets, and arranged them on the dining room table, leaving spaces for Esme's flower pots between them.

Bella walked in, looking like an orphaned brownie-sprite in a ratty hoodie and jeans that I think I might remember buying for my brother, hair a mess and lips blatantly swollen from kissing, and she hugged me and admired the baskets. I pulled her to my room to throw some clothes at her - a nubby sweater dress that made her boobs look fantastic and long argyle socks with diamonds that matched both the dress and her purple high-tops - wishing she would wear heels to show off her fabulous legs, but the Chucks were her trademark, and honestly she was clumsy as fuck, so I let it be and piled her hair up on her head, elegant enough for a socialite dinner party, but still Bella.

I dressed as Alice or my version of it, because that's what people expected: sheer silk stockings with pastel blue stripes, and a little blue dress and a bow in my hair, totally Disney goth with fake eyelashes and utterly cute, as long as you didn't know I was wearing transparent lace underwear.

Bella went to get Rosalie, so we could listen to a new tune she'd found, and we danced around my studio to "Lighthouse" by the Waifs, girly bouncy folk rock with an excellent harmonica that had me itching for my harps before the first verse was over, and Rose went almost cross-eyed, listening for the chords, but the boys interrupted, complaining about chick blues, and Jasper demanded a toast to our first official benefit concert and passed out shots of some new bourbon that bit at my lipstick and burned on the way down, which Edward said was smooth and Bella and I both grimaced at.

It wasn't really a concert, just us playing in the living room, but we played well and had fun and gave a lot of the new CDs away, and Esme raised a heap of money auctioning off her latest fancy orchids; Aro's strange skeletal wife bought a really weird and rare one for nine thousand dollars, and none of the baskets were sponsored for less than $500 apiece. The money was split between the women's clinic at the hospital, and the Komen foundation, and it was a good evening, though I'm not sure I'd ever seen Dad get that drunk, not that anyone but me or my brothers noticed, though we had to rescue him from Mrs. Goff, who flirted with everyone outrageously and bought a pink spider orchid for sixty-five hundred, out-bidding Mike Newton's crusty old grandmother who got pissy and asked if she could afford such things on a teacher's salary, to which Mrs. Goff said something in Spanish that made Emmett's eyes bug out of his skull.

Sue Clearwater came, looking nervous, but Edward made her and Esme fancy coffee with whipped cream and they sat on the back porch and talked about getting a women's clinic on the reservation, and before she left, she asked Twin if he might give her youngest son piano lessons, and I wondered how much of the fight between my dad and the Quileute elders was a man thing.

Halfway through the night, Jazz realized I was wearing his second favorite lacy underthings, and was never more than ten feet away from me, azure eyes flashing to indigo behind gold and ash-blond locks of hair when I smiled at him, and when Dad started listing in doorways, looking at me like I was a ghost, his sons took him to his bed before he fell over, and then Jasper took me to his, and made me laugh, then gasp, then moan, and I fell asleep, the same person I was when I woke that morning.

**Jasper:  
** Mom and Edward made breakfast, cheesy eggs and greasy sausages with syrup to dip them in. My stomach groaned in protest at the smell, but at the first taste, my hangover nausea eased and then I ate ravenously. Carlisle must have made the coffee; it was too strong and viciously acrid, and I gagged a little at the cup I slung down my throat, but after the second, my head was clear.

"Jazz, are you up for delivering today?" Mom nodded her head to the dining room, where the baskets sat for her three "specials."

I nodded. I seemed in better post-party shape than she was. Her hair was as scrambled as the eggs, and she was moving much slower than usual.

"Then would you mind dropping the baskets off this morning, before you head down to practice? Dora still has her mahjong ladies over in the afternoon, and Millie gets tired pretty quickly."

The others weren't up yet, and at my stepbrother's glassy eyed smile at Bella and her blush in return, I gathered they wouldn't mind postponing rehearsal a bit. I nodded, sliding off a stool to go wake Alice, but Edward caught my eye and shook his head, recognizing my intent.

"Let her sleep, Bro." His voice was quiet. Carlisle nodded in agreement, and then winced at the movement.

I stuffed my feet into the pink croc skin boots Rosalie bought me as a birthday joke, grinning at Edward's snort of derision. They were gay as hell, but no one calls you that when Alice Cullen is your girlfriend and you have a reputation for breaking bones, and nothing makes people smile like a pair of ridiculous, Pepto-Bismol colored, Texas shit-kickers.

Mom slipped a little pink metal tin of so-strong-they-curl-your-nose-hair mints into each bundle, and some leftover cookies from the party in a bag with a note attached to each one, and helped me carry the three baskets to the car.

"Don't get stopped for speeding," she admonished. I grinned and waved, and took off, and she closed the garage door behind me.

I drove, taking the winding road slower than I needed, no-one behind me to get annoyed, my car filled with Tony Levin's "Slow Glide," a bass heavy tune that was influencing the way I was looking at one of Edward's latest tunes about a witchy girl. I could hear Emmett on talking blues, and then an ending chorus all melodic and mystical, Bella and Edward all twined up in harmony.

I eased into Dora Gustavo's driveway as the song finished its second repeat, and waited patiently for her to answer the doorbell. I could hear the soft shuffle and thump of her walker as she neared.

"Oooh! Hello, Jasper!" She opened the door wide.

"Looking good today, Mrs. G.!"

Mrs. Gustavo was probably in her late sixties, and she wore a lot of makeup, including painted on orange eyebrows that didn't match her iced tea-colored wig, but her eyes sparkled as she fluttered her lashes at me.

"You stop that, now, you'll make an old lady blush!" She pointed to the table next to an armchair in the living room, and followed me in. I set the basket down, and she lowered herself into the chair, and inspected all the pink goodness, cooing over some mittens and a scarf. She slipped the tin of mints and a packet of M&M's in the pocket of her housecoat, and winked at me.

"My friends are coming, and I don't want to share," she said, with a conspiratorial grin. I laughed with her. "They can have the cookies," she said. "Don't tell your mother, but I don't like nuts."

I promised not to, and took my leave.

The next stop was Mrs. Randal, a few streets down.

She greeted me, looking tired, but brightened at the contents of the basket, and we laughed at the four cats that jumped on the table and sniffed at each item as she pulled it out. I asked her if there was anything she needed done around the house, and she shook her head, but I emptied the two cat boxes anyway, as I always did, because she would never ask. The big bag of clay granules was heavy, and though she seemed mobile enough, she didn't have a lot of strength since the latest round of radiation and the accompanying meds. I took out the trash while I was at it. I wondered where Mr. Randal was; there was no sign of a male presence in the house, other than a residual odor of tomcat spray.

When I came back to her little kitchen, she was feebly chasing after a kitten who had made off with the pink pen, and screeching at another who was batting the tin of mints under the stove. Another cat was chewing on the fake flower that was attached to the basket. I rescued the tin and the pen, and jotted down "kitty litter" and "trash can liners" on the shopping list held to the fridge with magnets.

"Tell your mother she's an angel," Mrs. Randal called as I was leaving, the tin still in her hand as she waved.

The last basket went to Millie Verner, who lived on the Forks side of Lake Pleasant.

She was sitting on her front porch, wrapped in a blanket with a multi-colored toboggan hat on. She was thinner than last week, but her eyes were bright.

"Jasper!" she croaked in greeting. "Is it basket season already? How much did she bilk them for this year?"

"Nearly fifty thousand," I said with pride.

"Holy shit. Your mother is evil incarnate. Let's go inside. It's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."

I carried the basket in, and set it on the kitchen table. Her daily pill boxes sat on the table, and I noticed that this morning's doses hadn't been taken yet. I arched an eyebrow at her and she shrugged.

"They don't stay down well on an empty stomach," she muttered.

I nodded, and fished the tin of mints out of her basket, and handed it to her.

"Make us some tea, will you?" she said.

I filled the kettle and lit the stove, while she opened the tin and pulled out one of the joints hidden under the mints. She fumbled with a lighter for a moment, and finally I took it out of her shaking fingers and lit it, drawing light to nurse a cherry coal, and then dabbed a bit of spit on a run up the side. I passed it to her, and she sucked down the smoke, closing her eyes in relief. She offered it again, and I toked a polite half-puff to keep her company, but I had to drive home in a little while.

She took off her knitted cap and rubbed her scalp, catching me off guard. I looked away, and then jumped up, grabbing two mugs and the box of teabags.

"Sorry," she said, putting the hat back on. "It itches."

"Don't be." My voice betrayed me, soaring up to some sort of pre-pubescent squawk.

"Damn, boy, is your voice _ever_ going to settle down?"

"I have no clue," I sighed, back in my baritone range. I poured the tea into the two mugs, and spooned honey into both. "That's why I leave the singing to the others."

"This you?" she asked, reaching for the CD in the basket. Her sleeves slid up, revealing bruises and needle marks on her wrists.

"Yep," I said, grimacing as my voice cracked up to a countertenor.

Millie gave me a long look.

"What's got you so tense, Jasper? You've seen me worse."

I closed my eyes briefly against the memory of her in the hospital, hooked up to machines, her misshapen form barely covered by the hospital gown, eyes thick with drugs.

"Alice," I whispered.

"Ah. Her results came back."

I nodded.

"And she's positive for the cancer gene?"

I nodded again, feeling like a puppet with a string attached to the top of my head. "We found out yesterday morning."

"How's she doing with it?"

"She's okay. Better than the rest of us. I guess it's good to finally know." Alice actually seemed in a lighter place yesterday, maybe from the party excitement, or just with relief that waiting was over. I didn't know; probably a mix of both.

"What's she going to do?" Millie poked at the bag of cookies, and nibbled on the edge of one.

"Dunno yet. She's looking at her options."

"She's what, seventeen? She's got some time. They discover new shit every day."

I nodded, staring into the mug of tea, at the distorted reflection of the ceiling within. Everything was upside down, I thought. Just when it felt like life was moving forward, going in a direction that finally worked for all of us, Karma decided that it couldn't have perfect, gorgeous, angelic people in the world, and made Alice flawed, on a bone-deep cellular level.

"Damn, it's good to finally be hungry," the woman in the baggy clothes said, mumbling around the cookie in her mouth.

I shook off the melancholy and the fear, and grinned at her. "I'll make you breakfast. What would you like?"

"Can you cook?"

"Um. Well… no." I shuffled my feet and tried not to laugh in embarrassment.

"Then get me some Cheerios, boy. And put a lot of sugar on 'em."

I poured her the cereal and milk, and got her the sugar and a spoon, and put the CD in the player on her kitchen counter at her request. We listened; me with a critical ear, hers appreciative, as she slowly ate. In between the first bowl and the second, she took her meds, and handed me the packet of origami paper.

We rummaged through the little kit together, and laughed as I tried to follow one of the line diagrams, mangling the painted paper into something resembling the crane on the front of the booklet.

After a bit Millie set her teacup down with a thump, and I could tell she was getting tired. I washed the dishes, and turned down the music, but she shook her head at me and closed her eyes. Her eyelids were dark, and her skin was almost transparent with pallor, the blue veins stark and scary.

"Leave it on," she said. "It's good company."

I stood at the counter, twisting the towel in my hands, wondering how to get out of there before I rudely bolted out the door. Her fatigue terrified me, and I suddenly wanted to get home to Alice's vibrancy so badly it was almost physical pain.

Millie held her hand out, and I took it, giving it a gentle squeeze. She opened her palm, and the little crane was inside.

"Give this to your girl. And tell her to come see me."

I nodded, and headed out into the cold. I drove home quickly, taking every shortcut I knew, anxiety curling like a serpent in my belly.

"_Fear can't hurt you any more than a dream,"_ I told myself, quoting William Golding, over and over, the whole way home.

**Alice:**  
I met Jasper at the door, and at his stiff movements my excitement at the latest news suddenly gave way to nervousness, but when he saw me, the tension eased from him, and I wished he hadn't gone, that he had let Esme make the "special deliveries" today, for once. He didn't need that, seeing all those sick women, right now, not today, but I knew it wouldn't matter, once I told him.

"Hi," I said, taking his coat. "Guess what? Aro called, and you aren't going to believe this: Felix just took a reservation for Friday night from a guy from the Rolling Stone, and he's bringing a photographer!"

Jasper blinked at me, and the last of the darkness ebbed from his face, and he shone again, sunlight gold and sky blue eyes, and I was lost for a moment, watching the surprise and the hope and the excitement roll through him. He picked me up and spun me around, and kissed me, mouth still cold from winter's rime, and I laughed with him, and the words tumbled out of me.

"The others are downstairs. Rosalie is playing like her pants are on fire! Edward has been screaming 'I told you so, fucker,' at Emmett for the past half an hour, and so he's been drumming single-sticked so he can flip Twin off every time he turns around, and you need to go say something funny to Bella because she looks terrified. We did it, Jazz! _You _did it! You led us here, and we're real, now, and mmphm-"

He kissed me again, to shut me up, and I kicked at him, but only a little, because there is no nicer way to be told to stop talking than to have your mouth covered by the perfect set of lips, slightly dry and chapped from the chill, but then soft and warm, and then wet and Jasper-flavored, tongue slow in my mouth. He was being tender and lingering and it was so lovely, and I forgot everything except him, and his hands splayed flat at my waist; I wanted to grind against him, but we were in the foyer in broad daylight, and Esme was in the kitchen, calling out, "Jazz? How was Mrs. Randall?"

"She seemed better, Mom." He pulled me through the kitchen and toward the basement door, stopping to kiss her cheek. "That's from Dora."

"Has Millie gained any weight?" My stepmother asked.

"No, but her sense of humor is back, and she ate while I was there. She said you are evil."

"Should I take that as a compliment?"

"Yes. She is impressed with your ability to gouge the rich under the guise of elitist horticulture while covertly supplying Forks' chemo patients with illegal appetite stimulants."

"She said all that?" I asked.

"No. She said Mom was 'one high-class stoner bitch.'"

I giggled, and Esme pointed to the basement with a mock frown. "You've got a gig to practice for, mister."

Jazz opened the door, and then walked ahead of me on the stairs as always, some archaic gentleman's code to keep my helpless self from possibly falling, but at the bottom he paused, turning so I was a step up and still shorter than him, but he tilted his head and looked into my eyes.

"How are you?" he whispered.

"I'm fine," I said firmly, taking his hand and leading him to the sound studio. And I _was_ fine, I told myself. I had a bad gene that meant lots of scary chances and odds, but all my tests were clear so far, and I could make hard choices later.

Edward shoved me away and he and Jazz did some dorky ghetto-handshake-shoulder-bump-thing, and then he and Em flipped each other off. He tipped an imaginary hat at Rose, and bent down to whisper something in Bella's ear that had to be dirty, because she blushed and looked at Edward, who laughed.

He picked up his bass and thumbed an opening to one of our warm ups, scolding us for not getting started without him, and we fell in behind, guitar and drums, keyboard and voice. I wondered for the umpteenth time if he had any idea how much he led us; that we _couldn't_ start without him.

I picked up my chromatic harp, and found my notes, afraid of nothing now that he was here.

* * *

To what charity would you donate the most?


	4. Point of Focus

Your reviews left me all verklempt, and I didn't respond as much as I should have.  
Most of us have been affected by cancer, and give to conquer it and aid the people it ravages. I walk wearing pink, donate bags of pet food and buy odd things at fandom auctions.

ElleCC betas this oddness, and Stephenie owns what I don't.

* * *

January:  
**Jasper:  
**"C'mon, kid, don't fugue out on me!" Edward's disgruntled voice rung out as the music in the living room stopped. "You had it!"

Alice and I grinned at each other, and Bella snorted into her Chemistry book.

Seth Clearwater might actually be a fairly skilled pianist when he grew up, if he would stop fazing out into the stratosphere in the middle of a song. His mother claimed he was getting better, and that the lessons were helping a lot, but the kid's brain still had a lot of damage to overcome. The combination of drugs James had given him and the resulting coma had left black holes in his concentration that sucked him deep at random moments, and while the boy's condition wasn't amusing, Edward's frustration was hilarious.

In fact, we scheduled homework sessions in the dining room during Seth's lessons, just so we could listen to my stepbrother struggle to keep his tone steady as his patience cracked and chipped like earthenware pottery.

Edward had a good rapport with the kid, and the youngest Clearwater obviously worshipped his teacher's shoes. Twice a week they both walked out of the great room smiling, Seth bouncing at Edward's heels, and Edward's hair twisted into clumps where he had grabbed at it with both hands.

"Ahem." Bella pointed to Alice's notebook. "You _will_ calculate your share of these molarity problems, or I will personally burn every copy of that magazine you own."

"But look at us!" Alice whispered, holding up the page. "We look perfect!"

"Yes, we do," I said, not without satisfaction, "but if we fail Chemistry, Carlisle isn't going to let your pretty little ass fart outside of this house, much less tour Europe."

She pouted and put it away. I understood her excitement. It was one thing to dream, and to have people we knew tell us that the music was good, but it was another to see it in print. It was almost overwhelming to think about: our lives on this precipice of something unfathomably huge.

Bella caught my eye and glanced at Alice, and then looked away quickly, but her secret smile as she went back to our homework gave away what she was feeling. I nodded, agreeing. The article could not have come out at a better time. My girlfriend's amazing strength of character had been fraying at the edges, and the excitement of the holidays had worn off in the silence and cold of the new year. I would catch her at the window, staring into the distance, or gazing at a blank sheet of sketch paper, and I could feel the helpless anxiety rolling off her in waves. I'd felt useless, unable to say the right thing.

But the magazine's arrival yesterday had brought back the gold light in her hazel eyes, and the bounce in her spine and smile this morning were there before she'd had any caffeine.

"Yes!" Edward shouted triumphantly, as Seth brought the piece to a close without any pauses or mistakes. "You did it, buddy! Now, practice this, and on Wednesday we'll work on Chopin's number five. Naw, don't look at me like that. It's fun. It's all on the _black_ keys. Look!"

"Show off," muttered Bella, as the quick notes rolled, quick and furious, from the other room.

"He's going to be such a good dad," said Alice, wistfully, as her brother and his student walked through the room.

"Do not say things like that, Alice!" hissed Edward's girlfriend, blanching a little.

I pushed away from the table and followed the piano players into the kitchen.

"I'll drop Seth off, dude. I need to run a few errands," I told Edward.

"Hey!" called out Alice in protest, "What about our Chemistry homework?!"

"I'll finish when I get back," I yelled back, having no intent to do so.

We left through the garage, and I drove through the late morning sun, blinking at the glare that flashed through the trees like a strobe light.

"Edward is fast," piped up Seth.

"He does play fast," I agreed.

"He_ drives_ fast," the boy corrected, and I felt chastised for my slow speed.

He reached into the console and picked Millie V.'s crumpled paper crane out of the gum wrappers and change. His fingers moved rapidly, unfolding it, smoothing the paper out, and then redoing the folds with precise sharp edges, scoring each one with his thumbnail. I found it hard to concentrate on the road; his hands moved so quick and sure over the paper, it was no leap to see the kid could be a musician.

"Do you like playing piano?" I asked him, as the silence fell again.

"Yes," he said, but there was some reluctance in his voice.

"But?" I encouraged him, smiling.

"I want to be in the _band_. I want to play with Jake and Leah. Mom wants me to learn classical and to read music because my brain is messed up and I have to learn discipline and to _focus_." He spat the word like it was an epithet. "It doesn't matter, anyway. Sam treats me like a baby."

He flipped the crane up onto the dash, and it caught up against the glass on a wingtip, looking like it was veering midflight.

"You should tell Edward that," I said. "I bet he could find you some cool songs."

"Yeah?" he asked, and his eyes were so wide you would have thought my stepbrother walked on water.

We pulled up to the diner where Sue was waiting for her son, and after seeing him off, I stepped inside to get a cup of coffee.

A tall man with walnut-colored skin and dreads was ahead of me in line, talking to the girl at the register. He had on a black suit coat, chinos, and fancy Italian shoes Alice would have marveled over. I ignored the casual conversation in front of me, thinking instead about my girlfriend's remark earlier. I rarely felt jealous of her close relationship with her twin brother, but the comment about Edward being a good father irked me a little. She'd never said anything like that to me. Did she not think I was capable of being a good dad, just because I didn't have one of my own?

"Victoria? She's that redhead that hung out with Rosalie Hale. She used to go to my school." The girl's voice cut through my thoughts.

"And do you know where I might find her?" The man's voice was silky, with a cultured Caribbean accent. There was an edge to his tone that bothered me.

She shook her head, but nodded to me with her nose as she handed him his Styrofoam to go box. "Jasper might know."

The man turned to me. His eyes were bloodshot and strange under straight wide eyebrows, but his smile was pleasant.

"Have you seen my friend Victoria? She has proven most elusive."

Again, the oily tone to his smooth voice made me wary, and I shrugged.

"Not for a while," I said. _Not since she flipped out and attacked Bella when her boyfriend was arrested in Olympia,_ I didn't say, but then I added, "She used to hang out on the Reservation with James," hoping to end the conversation before the girl at the counter pointed out that I was Rose's brother.

The man nodded and left, thanking us both.

"He was sort of creepy," the girl said, handing me my coffee and change.

**Alice:**  
After Bella and I finished Jasper's chemistry homework, we tried to practice _The Dealer,_ a weird little techno blues song by Johnny Madwreck, which I liked because it had a nifty harmonica wail at the end, and Jasper had Edward singing with Bella just a single beat behind, so the whole thing was all haunting and smooth, but it was really hard to get the timing right, and I wasn't getting the sound I wanted, either.

My phone buzzed, breaking my concentration yet again. Rosalie stopped playing, and waited. I had finally switched my phone to vibrate after the fourth call in an hour - school acquaintances suddenly becoming best friends since our name made the news – but we still hadn't managed to get any decent practicing done. This was just a text from Dad though, saying he would bring pizza home for dinner and asking how many of us would be around. Then Rosalie's phone rang: Esme calling to ask if we had seen or heard from Seth, he'd wandered off again and Sue had called her, all worried - but we hadn't heard from him since Jasper dropped him off at the diner several hours ago, and she'd seen him since then. That woman was so overprotective, no wonder the kid escaped to his own reality on occasion.

Then we had to stop as Bella fielded a call from Angela Weber, genuine congratulations from one of our biggest supporters since we were in eighth grade, and Rose's phone went off at the same time, a familiar ringtone that we hadn't heard since before the Olympic Blues Festival in early November. She looked at me, and then we both looked at Bella laughing on her iPhone, and Rose silenced the ring, but didn't answer it.

Bella hung up, smiling but obviously frustrated, and when my stepsister's back pocket vibrated again, I took her phone from her jeans, and Bella's from her hands, and laid them both and mine on the floor of Jasper's closet, and shut the door.

"They have off buttons," said Rosalie.

"We would still feel them, dead weight in our pockets, and we'd check them, just to make sure that we weren't missing someone important. They need to be gone, off our bodies, no weird phone juju to mess with the music. Dig it, stilts?" I shook my finger up at Rosalie's face.

"Play, pipsqueak," she growled at me.

So, I tried again, cupping my diatonic harmonica in my palms, tamping the sound with my pinkies, but my draw was muddy and the notes were harsh. I gave it one more time, and then tossed the brass and chrome instrument on the bed, because my mouth was getting buzzed, and at Bella's questioning glance, I said, "What?"

"What are you so stressed about, Alice?" Bella asked,

I stared at my best friend, and slumped into the beanbag next to hers. We were in Jasper's room because even though I'd all but shoved him out the door and told him to go to the library and read Civil War books or ogle the stick bass at the music store in Port Angeles, or just go for a drive and be alone in his own head for a while and quit _babysitting_ me, I still missed him, and his room smelled like him; old incense and bow rosin and leather –warm Jasper things.

I looked down at my hands, and pushed my fist into the orange vinyl, making a divot in the stuffing. Above a seam, my boyfriend's tight scrawl followed the line of stitching:  
_Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. THAT's relativity. –Albert Einstein_.  
I followed the words with my fingertip, wondering if he'd bought an indelible marker just to write on his furniture, and if it would work for tailor's marks on the naugahyde I'd bought for a bodice design, and at Bella's silence, I gave her deep question a topical answer.

"I don't know, I'm just not getting the second part right. A flute follows the harmonica solo at the end, and no matter how clean I draw, it still sounds like the same damned instrument, not a new voice echoing the other. I want to give the end the same effect as your voices, and I just can't get there."

Rosalie tweaked a chord that sounded suspiciously like a raspberry, and Bella nodded at her in agreement.

"I wasn't talking about the music," she said, nudging my knee with hers.

I looked at her, wondering if I dared talk about it, afraid that if I let one drop of my concerns out, the floodgates would open. She stared back, waiting.

"It's the timing," I finally sighed. "It's not what I need to do, but when. Bella, I know you don't see it yet, but we're going to be consumed by the media, and after _Tropic of Virgo_ comes out, we're going to have paparazzi on our door, and people are going to be poking their noses into our business and our sleeping arrangements. And if I have to be taken apart and put back together, I'd rather not have it done in the public eye – so if I'm going to do this, I have to do it soon. Really soon, Dad says, so I have time to recuperate before we go on tour, and quite honestly, I'm scared."

"You have a right to be scared, Alice!" Bella looked appalled. "This is a huge decision!"

"See, it's not. It's not even a choice. With my family history and the number of X-rays I had as a child, I'm looking at a ninety-three percent chance of getting cancer before I'm sixty. I don't wait around for seven percent chances of anything."

"But forty years from now, they'll be able to grow you new boobs from scratch or something!" my friend protested.

"Yeah. But here's the thing. They call it the breast cancer gene, but it's not, really. It's the estrogen gene; and once you take out the girl parts, the boobs are at half the risk. And maybe I could deal with those odds, with early detection and all, except that if I don't get rid of them, too, no doctor is going to give me replacement hormones. And I'm not ready for that. I mean, I can deal with not having kids; that's easy. I don't want to pass these chromosomes on to anyone, you know, but…" I wiped my face, annoyed with the tears and tried to catch my breath properly when Bella put her arms around me, but I was stiff, afraid that if I let her be nice, I would fall apart, but the words wouldn't stop.

"I can totally deal with getting fake boobs that will last me until I'm a hundred years old. Maybe I'll get huge knockers out to _here_. They can even do nipple graft things so I don't lose those, though it sounds totally weird. But I'm afraid of getting spayed." I sniffed back snot, and she offered me her sleeve.

"Gross, Bella!" I shoved her away, but she'd made me laugh.

Rosalie went into Jasper's bathroom and ganked a roll of toilet paper and tossed it to me.

"See, everyone's so focused on boobs. But the real issue is that the gene also gives you much higher odds of developing ovarian cancer. And then you're not just talking about surgery, or chemo, you're talking about survival rates, and the risks start when you are much younger. Like now. My cousin Cynthia got it at age nineteen. So I've got to have them out, and I'm not ready to be neutered. I like being a girl," I whispered, staring at the wadded tissue in my fist.

Bella peeled my fingers back and took the soggy mass from me, pinched in reluctant fingertips, and I rolled my eyes at her, because she'd offered me her sleeve a second ago. She threw it in Jazz's trashcan and pulled me to my feet.

She opened the bathroom door, cocking it so that the full-length mirror reflected us, and moved behind me, framing my face with flat hands, in the classic "vogue" pose.

"This isn't going to change, is it?" she asked, "Because this is the face of a girl."

Then she slapped my ass hard, making me squeak.

"And the butt that Jasper can't keep his eyes or hands off, that's not going anywhere, is it?"

I gave her a dirty look and shook my head.

"And they might take out some of the plumbing, but they're leaving the knob for the hot, right?" she said, pointing toward my girly bits, blushing through her grin.

I laughed, and let my best friend pull me into that strange still calm that always surrounded her, buffering me from the anxiety of the outside world.

"What do you think, Rosalie?" Bella asked.

My stepsister looked at us in the mirror, and arched an eyebrow.

"Do the second solo on a different harmonica," she said, shrugging.

I gaped at her, and then started to giggle hysterically, a second release rebounding from the tears. Bella tried to stifle her own, and then we were sitting on the floor, howling, both of us holding our stomachs, and even Rose cracked a smile.

When I could finally control my oxygen flow, I played the solo, and then switched to my tremolo harp, warbling the end notes in a drifting lilt that was perfect.

**Jasper:  
**Cursing, I fumbled for my phone and dialed, then set it on speaker-phone and tossed it on the passenger seat. Sam picked it up on the first ring, and I heard the sound of an engine, and a radio being turned off.

"Hale," he said. "I'm on my way."

"Wait, dude, Jared's sitting in our spot, with Charlie Swan. It looks like he's filling out an accident report or something."

"Is he okay?!"

"I didn't stop, but yeah, he seems fine. It almost looks like someone took a bat to his windshield."

"Shit! Who'd he piss off this time?" he asked, but then he chuckled. "Kim's so gonna kill him if her car is fucked up."

"He didn't look happy."

"We should leave him his dignity, then."

"So where do you want to do this?"

"How about where we used to meet?" he asked. "That side road by the Smokehouse Grill." It was our meeting spot from last year, abandoned due to attention from nearby construction; but the road was paved now, and the workers and machines were gone.

"Sure."

"Excellent." He hung up without saying anything more.

Three minutes later, I was parked at the bottom of the road, leaning against my car. This was the part of the deal I hated, the waiting for the hook-up, hoping to hell one of Forks' three cops didn't show up. I had a fistful of excuses why I was stopped, and was always ready to step off the side of the road to fake a leak.

Sam pulled up, his perfectly restored '67 Plymouth Valiant twice as long as my Audi, and slid out of the red leather interior. He tossed a bag to me and I stuffed it into my coat pocket, annoyed at how casual he was.

"Dude," I grumbled. "Respect the herb. Some cultures worship the burning bush." I fished in my back pocket and handed him a wad of bills. He grinned and shoved it into his jeans without counting it.

"Can I bum a smoke?" he asked. "I'm out."

I passed him my soft pack with the lighter stuck in the cellophane.

He lit one and quirked an eyebrow at me.

I shook my head. "Just had one," I lied. The truth he would have smirked at: I was going home to dinner, and Carlisle was a prick when he caught us smoking "those damned cancer sticks."

"Emily showed me the article in the Rolling Stone," he said, exhaling through his nose. "Summer in Europe, huh? Congrats, man!"

I nodded, trying not to feel smug.

"Better you than me," he continued, grinning.

"How so?" I asked, surprised at his easy acceptance of our good fortune.

"If man was meant to fly, he'd have been born with wings." The Native American man shook his shoulders in mock horror.

"No Thunderbird spirit in you?" I asked, pleased that he was treating me as an equal, for once. And maybe we were, now. The Quileute Wolves had won the Delta Blues Festival and the local tour that went with it, but Volturi Guard had invited Breaking Dawn to open for them, and we both had mentions in the glossy music magazines.

"No," he said, so quietly I could barely hear him. "Tistilal is savage." A shudder passed through him; this time it was real. He took a long drag and exhaled hard.

He looked at me then, and I could feel him measuring me up in the early evening light.

"When Carlisle gets that icicle out of his ass, you all should come down to the Res and play with us. We could make a hell of a lot of noise." He flicked his cigarette sideways into the woods beyond the road, and turned back to his car.

"I'd like that," I said, and raised a hand as he took off.

I sighed, watching the thin curl of smoke rising out of the underbrush. There was no risk of forest fires in mid-January, but I still couldn't walk away from a burning cigarette butt.

I stepped into the pines and stopped short.

A few inches from the little white filter was a foot.

A man's foot, dark brown with yellowed toenails pointing to the sky, but oddly purple under the skin, lay in the pine scrub. It was attached to a leg, and disappeared into khaki pants that were covered in blood. The other foot had a shoe, an expensive two-toned brown wingtip with black laces.

The skin on my arms puckered strangely, and my balls tried to crawl up inside my guts as I stared stupidly at the shoe. A bird shrieked somewhere in the distance, breaking my trance, and I whispered for Sam, but I knew he was already gone.

In my peripheral vision was a hand lying on the ground, pinky finger at wrong angles to the palm, but I couldn't make my eyes follow up the arm to look at the face on the body.

I knew it would have dreadlocks and wide set eyes, but that it wouldn't be a person anymore. There was a stillness to the foot and the hand that belied any unconscious emotion, or blood flow, or life at all. And since I couldn't force my eyes to focus upward, I took a step forward, and another, bringing my gaze to the face.

He had been beaten badly. His nose was twisted to the side, and flat to his cheek, or what was left of it, and blood had congealed on the broken planes of his face in thick jellied pools. His right ear was torn partially away.

I knelt anyway, grateful that his eyes were mostly closed, and moved two fingers toward the hollow of his throat, certain there would be no flutter under my fingertips – the neck was twisted wrong and offset to the torso - but knowing that if I didn't check for a pulse, my cowardice would haunt me for the rest of my life.

I held my breath, and pressed. The muscle dented strangely under my fingertips, like cold clay, stiff and non-resilient, and I counted in my head, wondering how long I could stay there, fingers pushed into the waxy flesh with my tongue pressed tight to the roof of my mouth, closed against the iron smell of clotted blood and the strange noise threatening to escape my throat.

I made it to nine, and then I was at my car, gasping for air and fumbling with the keys, and when I dropped them, I bent down and rubbed my hand over the asphalt, trying to scrape off the feeling of the man's dead skin.

* * *

What physical feature most defines you?


	5. Scrabblewocky

We define ourselves by our hair, our eyes, our man's view of our bodies, and some by symbols of our faith. None of us mentioned sex or skin color. I find that interesting.

This is a bit of fluff because I missed the kids.  
Sometimes I put the songs on the forum thread. I'll start an Imeem list soon.

ElleCC beta'd, and Stephenie owns what I don't.

* * *

**Alice:**  
_"Edward Anthony Cullen!"_ Dad could be quite loud when he wanted. I supposed that's where Emmett and Twin got their bellows; I had a piercing shriek when provoked, but nothing compared to the men in my family.

Rosalie nudged her door open discreetly, and the three of us grinned with anticipation. Dad was about an hour later than we thought he would be, and by the tone of his voice, we were about to find out why.

The noises from the video game stopped, and oldest brother crooned, "_Somebody's in trouble_," while barely-older brother called out, "Yes, Father?" in his Most Obedient Son voice.

"Did you, by any chance, tell Seth Clearwater that you ran four miles a day?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I suppose you didn't tell him that you usually stay on the road!?"

"Uh…"

"I just spent the last hour cleaning bark out of briar scratches and branch welts on seventy-five percent of his body, and Sue is probably going to have to buzz his hair off for all the burrs in it!"

"I had no idea that he would… is he okay?"

"Yes, at least physically, but he apparently got lost and quite scared, and between that and Sue's distress, he's barely talking at all!"

"Ugh. Was she off her rocker?"

Bella rolled her eyes, and Rosalie nodded. We could practically _hear_ Mrs. Clearwater's nervous haranguing all the way from the reservation. Normally a strong confident woman, she was a wreck when it came to her son.

"Edward! You _have_ to be careful with what you tell that kid!"

"Yeah. Okay. Sorry."

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to her, and to everyone who is hungry. I placed the pizza order fifteen minutes before I thought I was going to get to leave, and now it's cold."

"I'll reheat it," my brother mumbled.

Rosalie's phone rang with Victoria's ring, the third time today, and again my stepsister silenced the call, though she looked relieved when the chime rang with a voicemail message. When Bella went downstairs to help Edward with the pizza, Rose pulled out her phone.

"What does she want?" I asked.

Rosalie shrugged.

"When was the last time you talked to her?"

"The Festival." She looked away, and I hugged her. She had publicly chosen family over friendship when Vicki assaulted Bella this past November, but I'd wondered if she had ever spoken to her privately.

"Has she called since then?"

"She left a voicemail at Christmas."

Rose elbowed me off and tapped her phone. I waited, not even pretending to give her any privacy, worried that she might be pushed or guilt-tripped into a choice she didn't want to make. Rosalie was gorgeous and tall and incredibly talented and didn't talk much, so she didn't make friends easily, and Victoria had been her best friend, not counting me, through most of high school, and I got on her nerves often, though much less than she pretended – she was the one who taught me to drive and explained how Tampax worked and she played ping-pong with me for hours and let me make her clothes, and though she would never admit she was lonely, she spent a lot of time in my room lately, playing on an acoustic guitar while I sketched.

"She's got some of my stuff," Rosalie said, shoving her phone back in her pocket.

"Anything worth having to talk to her?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"A pair of earrings mom gave me."

"The silver seashells?"

Rosalie nodded.

"I'm going with you when you meet her." I folded my arms across my chest, and she rolled her eyes and ruffled my hair, but didn't tell me no.

My own phone buzzed then, a strange number with a local exchange, and I answered it, curious, but the sigh on the other end was as familiar as my own skin.

"Alice," he said, voice settling into a raspy baritone.

"Hey, Jazz, where are you?" I went downstairs and headed to the foyer, instinctively looking for his headlights in the drive.

"I'm at the diner, at the payphone. I… I think I dropped my cell phone. Would you call it? And just let it ring until I find it?" Jasper almost sounded out of breath.

"Of course!"

"Thanks."

I waited for him to say more, but he just hung up. I felt strange, like I was going to remember this night for a very long time, and how cold I felt at this very moment. I poked at my screen, and began to count rings, wondering what was going on. I was always anxious when he went to meet Sam, and lately he'd not let me come along, though he didn't say why, and I didn't push him about it; we'd both been quieter lately, talking less and touching more, kind of switching places with Twin and Bella, who were usually the ones attached at the groin and conversational as octopuses. Octopods? Octopi? Would the plural of puss be "pi"? I didn't really know any lesbians well enough to ask about the proper plurality of female genitalia, though I'd heard that Tanya had moved in with her father and come out of the closet, much to the surprise and disappointment of most of the male population of Forks High, except for-

Jasper picked it up on the fourth ring.

"It was in here, under the seat!" He sounded so relieved that I wondered where he thought he might have lost it. "It must have slipped under when I took off-"

"Jazz, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm on my way home."

He didn't hang up, and I listened to his breathing and the car noises for a few minutes, keeping him company, imagining the curves in the road and where he was as the sounds changed with his speed.

"Mary Alice!" my father called from the kitchen. He was in the mood for full names, tonight.

"You should go," Jasper said.

"I love you," I said, and hung up before he said it back, not wanting to hear it prompted. I headed back to the kitchen.

Dad had one arm in a nylon jacket, holding a slice of pizza in his other hand, shoving his feet into his boots. The navy coat said "Clallam County Coroner" in large yellow reflective letters on the back. He rarely had to wear it, but it always meant that he was going to have a long night, and he was excited, though he was trying not to let it show; his "CSI coat" inferred that he could be a scientist, rather than a caregiver - at least for a few hours, he'd be getting his hands into the gritty analytical stuff of detective novels rather than trauma and distraught relatives.

"Charlie Swan called," he said, with his mouth full. "It looks like I'll be working late. Can you tell the others? I left Esme a voicemail, but who knows if she'll actually listen to it."

I wrapped up two more slices in aluminum foil, and handed it to him. He looked longingly at the coffeepot, then at the clock and sighed.

"Who died?" I asked.

"He didn't give me any specifics, honey."

He grabbed his medical bag and headed to the garage; I followed him with his foil dinner package. I watched him pick up a large flashlight from a utility shelf and check the batteries - the body was outside, then; he was wearing his boots, too, so the chief of police _had_ given him some specifics, and Dad wasn't sharing the details. I watched him attach the little red bubble strobe to the dash of his car, curious in a morbid sort of way, and waved as he left. I didn't close the garage door, knowing Jasper would be home any second, and I sat on the little steps outside the kitchen door to wait.

**Jasper:**  
I passed Carlisle half a mile from our house. He waved three fingers from the steering wheel, but his face was grim and the flashing red light on the dash made his features macabre in the dusk.

It hadn't occurred to me that he would be called to the "scene," but it somehow made me feel better, that I had passed on the responsibility of the corpse in the woods to someone who would take care of things properly.

After peeling out of the dead end road near the grill, I'd driven to town, intending to stop by the police station to tell Charlie Swan about the body, but then changed my mind as the fragrant scent of the quarter ounce of weed skunked out of my pocket.

I'd patted down my jacket, and then pulled up next to the ancient payphone at the diner when I realized that I had left my iPhone at home, and dialed 911. My voice had cracked up two octaves, and after the woman on the other end asked me if there was an adult nearby, I told her again where the body was and hung up.

Then I'd remembered calling Sam on my iPhone, and the thought that I might have dropped it near the dead guy nearly had me throwing up. I'd called Alice, panicked that I wouldn't have time to find it before the police showed up, and the relief I'd felt when I heard my cell with her ringtone made my head spin.

The band did not need a scandal right now. Not that smoking pot, under-aged drinking and premarital sex were that uncommon practices in the world, much less for a rock band, but Carlisle and Mom had worked very hard to make moderation a habit and discretion a lifestyle, and Santiago had been clear that the Volturi Guard had asked us to tour with them in part due to our image.

The image in question was apparently hard to define: clean cut yet quirky, precociously talented, adorably in love – each magazine took a different spin when reviewing Breaking Dawn. We'd managed to avoid labels, both metaphorically and industry-wise: three girls and we weren't a chick band, hard blues and a unique enough sound that we were making the college play lists, too many mainstream covers to be called independent, but still writing our own material. The fact that we were self-produced both helped and limited us; without a major backing label we had to do our own marketing and promotion, but we had no one telling us what we should and shouldn't do with our sound.

Charlie Swan's cruiser sped by as I was leaving the diner, blue lights on but no siren. No need to wake the dead, I supposed. I wondered if he thought it was a prank call.

I shivered in the car, trying to keep the bloodied face from my subconscious vision as I drove home.

The garage door was open and Alice was waiting inside, on the stairs that led into the house, arms wrapped around her knees. She was wearing a dress I liked, olive and gold with some crazy patterns all over the thin material and patterned stockings that didn't go all the way up. The way she was sitting flashed the underside of white thighs, and even though most of my brain was a freaked out mess, part of my head rejoiced that I was such a lucky bastard to have her.

She blinked at the headlights and smiled, but her eyes were puffy and her make-up was smeared, and I could tell she'd been crying recently. Her shoulders were relaxed, though, and the faint "M" of worry between her eyebrows was gone.

I reached out to touch her hair, but hooked my thumb through my belt loop instead, hoping it came off as casual. I couldn't bring myself to touch her. I needed to wash my hands desperately; even if I'd wiped off all residue of the dead man from my fingers, I still _felt_ foul.

"Everything okay?" she asked.

I hesitated, and the concern flickered across her face, marring her smile.

"Yeah," I said.

"I'm glad you're home," she said. She stood, clasping her hands behind her back, and kissed both my cheeks like a French girl would. "Dad had to answer a call from Chief Swan, did you pass him on the way in? Esme's working late, but there is a sh'load of pizza. We worked on the song, I can't wait for you to hear it; I figured out the solo at the end, and it's really good. Wow, I can smell that stuff from here! Thank god you didn't get pulled over for anything, Jazz, you'd have been busted on the spot… What's wrong?"

"I think I got chilled, standing around talking to Sam," I said. I'd tell her the about the dead man in the woods later; right now she was herself, happy, and I didn't want to see any more stress make those lines on her face.

She took my jacket, retrieved the bag of weed from the pocket, pulled me to my room and tugged my sweater off over my head, then started the hot water running in the shower, packed my pocket bong with the last of the old dope, passed me the lighter and then sucked the smoke back from me, shotgun, lips feather light against mine.

The earthy fog heated my lungs, easing the shaking in my bones almost immediately, and slid into my skull, dulling the chaos with a soothing whisper. Alice undid my belt buckle and I shed my boots, and then my pants were off and I was standing in just my socks, grinning down at her. She was staring at my semi-erection, and I shrugged and grinned, because of course I was going to get hard when she undressed me, but then she was petting me with her warm hands, and I was at full attention, but I grabbed her wrists in my left hand and growled at her, and hauled her into the shower with me, fully dressed.

She shrieked and fought me, but I just held her, trapping her in my arms the way one holds a fluttering bird, and let the hot water cascade down on us, washing away the outside world.

**Alice:  
**"'Boojum'" is NOT a word!" Emmett protested hotly, as I counted my points.

"Yes, it is. It's in the _Hunting of the Snark,_ by Lewis Carroll," I said, and checked my math again. "Thirty-four points."

"What the fuck is a "boojum?" He was still fussy.

Rosalie strummed a low note, and Jazz mimicked it on the bass that was splayed over his lap, though the strings were deadened by the trough of tiles he'd wedged between them. He announced:

"_They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;  
They pursued it with forks and hope;  
They threatened its life with a railway-share;  
They charmed it with smiles and soap."_

I laughed that he would remember, and added a few lines, even though they weren't next in the poem.

"_They roused him with muffins, they roused him with ice  
They roused him with mustard and cress--  
They roused him with jam and judicious advice,  
They set him conundrums to guess."_

Edward rolled his eyes and rolled his fingers, pinching the paper as he went. He licked it and passed to Emmett, who grinned at the honor of the virgin hit.

"I'm still not singing it," Twin said on an exhale, after passing to Bella. "I'm neither drunk nor gay enough to do that one."

"You used to be," challenged Emmett. "We used to play it all the time."

"I want to hear it," Bella pouted, looking up at him through her lashes.

I drifted.

My thoughts slowed, and I enjoyed the easy spiral that let me examine each in depth without chasing after each one in frenzy, but then Bella moved, a sinuous stretch, lying back on the floor. She raised her arms over her head, and then splayed her arms and legs and back again, and it didn't seem obscene until I saw the look on Twin's face. Her eyes were closed, serene, and I realized that-

"Bella?" I asked, "Are you making snow angels in the carpet?!"

We all laughed when she nodded, though I was enjoying Edward's discomfort.

"It's an interesting dichotomy, isn't it?" murmured Jasper. "The lascivious innocent?"

I smirked, and to prove his point I spread my knees a little at an angle only he could see, giving him a glimpse under my dress of the white lace between my legs. He shot me a dark look, and then deliberately strummed his thumb over the strings in a suggestive motion, and I became jealous of the musical instrument in his lap.

"Quit using big words. You sound like an asshole," Emmett said.

"Yeah, dude," said Edward. "Hyper-extending your prodigious vocabulary makes you appear pretentious."

"It's my room. Deal with the vastness of my verbal lexicon or get the fuck out." Jasper blew a smoke ring at the scrabble board and I watched it float and twist into a mobius strip and dissipate into the air.

Rosalie smiled, wicked red lipstick curling over her teeth, and laid the word EXQUISITE around Jasper's SIT – which got him something like 26 points, for he is the master of dropping one tile to make six little words at a time – and she racked up five million points.

Time slowed, weaving through the haze in the room, and I rearranged my tiles in the little tray over and over, getting caught in the music in the stereo: Gov't Mule's "Hammer and Nails." Rosalie played with the amp turned low, and Em kept time on the bottom of his shoe.

"It's your turn, darl," Jazz whispered, and I frowned, because I thought it might really be his, but I put down UMP in front of my brother's OTHER to get MOTHER, and got the giggles, because it sounded funny in my head.

Edward scowled at me, because I took his word spot, and made both triple word squares hard to use. I stuck my tongue out at him.

My boyfriend was staring into the air in front of him, eyes focused on something in his head. I nudged him.

"Here. You play," he said to Bella, giving her his tray.

He twisted around behind him, and pulled out a notebook, and tore a sheet of paper out of it. He twisted it into a triangle, and tore off an edge, and then folded it twice, scoring the edges with his thumbnail on the belly of the bass, and opened up the paper again. I wriggled around to sit next to him, to watch.

He was wearing a tuxedo shirt with a plain front, the little wingtip collar open at his neck, French cuffs folded back over his wrists, and black pajama bottoms. His feet were bare and I wanted to touch him, to run my finger down the sole of his foot and make him gasp, but we weren't alone. His hair was still damp from our shower, curling at the edges; one wave hung across his cheek, and I tucked it behind his ear.

"Make a wish," he whispered, and the universe turned on the axis of his smile, soft mouth quirked just for me, and everything else disappeared, leaving only him, my golden boy-man with the sky in his eyes and me in their reflection. The heat of his glance made me have to hold my hands still, because I really wanted to take his pants off, but I closed my eyes, and wished that he would always look at me like that, and when I looked and nodded, he blew into the center of the paper square, and folded it up, tucking the corners in at even angles, turning points down, and then pulling the flaps to make a little crane. I held it in the palm of my hand, my heart beating hard, so much in love with him that my skin felt like it was on fire.

Then Bella's giggling broke through our moment, and I looked from Edward's horrified face to Emmett's pleased one. He had managed to spell out SPHINCTER in between two other words, using up all of his tiles.

"Fifty extra points, bitches!" he crowed.

Bella smiled sweetly at him, but her cheeks were flushed, and Jazz and I shared a quick glance of anticipation, both recognizing that the way she was biting her lip meant either Twin was eye-fucking her in the shadows, or she had a mega-scoring word – probably both.

She laid all her tiles down slowly, arranging them before and after the word I'd previously played. GALUMPHING stretched across two triple word boxes, giving her a ridiculous total of 164 points.

"I quit!" Edward yelled. "You win. But I'm only doing it just this once. Never again!"

I did a slow spin happy dance, off balance and silly, and turned down the stereo.

Jasper jumped up, righting the bass, and thumbed some low chords, grungy and elastic. Rosalie caught his pulse and roughed in a line, metallic and raw, augmenting the baseline blue notes. Emmett picked up the pencil he'd been keeping score with, and broke a rhythm in on Jazz's trashcan and the Scrabble box. I glanced at Bella, and pointed at the bag of spare tiles. She picked it up and shook it experimentally, and grinned at the noise; not a bad substitute for maracas.

I looked to Jazz with a question on my face and he glanced to the harmonica I'd left on his bed earlier, and I grabbed it and bounced lightly on the mattress, waiting. He caught Edward's eye, and nodded once. My brother took a deep breath, and crooned:

"_Hey, kid, rock and roll, rock on…"_

And he vamped it, showing off for Bella, forgetting to pretend that he didn't love the song, and I joined in on the chorus, and the line –

"_Jump up and down in my blue suede shoes-" _

– because it was my favorite, and Emmet had his moment, basso rumble on "James Dean!" and we were laughing, and Jasper was watching me, ice blue fire in his eyes, and my wish inside the paper crane was there, happening, right then.

* * *

What game are you best at?


	6. Dropping Eaves

We mostly like the classic games: Trivial Pursuit, Clue, and Monopoly; though Egyptian Rat Fuck has the best name. I can shoot the moon in Hearts on the hold hand.

Sometimes I leave music url's and weird things over on the Twilighted Forum.  
Reading Delta of Mercury might fill in a few details.

ElleCC betas this.  
Stephenie Meyer owns what I don't.

* * *

**Jasper:**  
I'm walking down the street in my father's pointy boots, each step hissing with steam that rises off the pavement in the shape of lizards to evaporate in the Texan sun. A wind moves but doesn't cool the sweat that drips down my neck, and the street stretches out into a tunnel of ground and sky, shimmering into heat and liquid reflection.

My sister sits on the sidewalk, hair chopped short in some little page-boy cut, white polka-dot dress wrapped tight around her knees. She is five years younger, and she's holding a strawberry in her hands, ripe and red and bleeding. She is wearing one shoe. The other sits beside her, a pair of cotton panties folded neatly beside the sock.

My mother's line of laundry blocks my path, squares of ivory sheets with a letter painted on each one, and the fabric beats at my face as I walk past. I am vulnerable, blind to what is coming, and I reach to my hips for the pistols at my side, ready. I know how to use them, and I look back at Rosalie. She says nothing. Her eyes are mine, and I see myself in them, black jeans, black boots, black shirt.

Black soul.

The strawberry is mashed in her hands, and she wipes her fingers in her lap, staining the dress, and in a hot flash I see red everywhere, vitriol coursing through my veins, black, scarlet, furious, and I kick through the sheets, screaming, guns in my hands, firing at Royce King's pale back. He's thrusting on top of an empty polka-dot dress, pants at his knees, and my bullets make no sound and no difference. I throw the guns down and they turn into lizards and scuttle away, tails whipping back and forth. The brute's friends stumble backward and dissipate into the sun while he grunts over the dress, and I rip his head back by his black hair while kicking downward. I hear the crunch of my heel against bone, and he shrieks like a girl, or maybe it's Rosie who cries, and I fall backward. He's over my lap, bottom half limp and twisted, and his stiff little penis spurts into the air.

The torn dress is caught by the wind and floats away, and I sigh in relief and anguish, and push the bastard off me. I'm standing now, and he looks up at me, brown dreadlocks and walnut skin and grey dead eyes, with a perfect impression of my thumb embossed in black on his forehead, and I'm screaming as an angel sobs my name.

"Jasper!"

I sat up and opened my eyes to moon white skin glowing in the dark, framed by a black feather muss of hair. My aching brain slid into reality while my roiling stomach competed for dominance with my ego's need to _not_ spew violently into my girlfriend's lap.

"Jasper?" Alice whispered again, tears running down her face. "I couldn't wake you!"

I gulped at the air, and the fresh oxygen cleared my head and settled my belly, but the sweat on my face turned cold, and I shivered.

"Was it bad?" I asked, stupidly. Of course it was bad. She wouldn't be crying if it wasn't bad.

She nodded, and I reached up to wipe the tears from her face.

"It's been a while," she said, and I nodded, my teeth chattering. I hadn't dreamed of my sister's rapist for over a year. "Same dream?"

"Yeah." I was lying. It was different; but the more I talked about it, the more I would remember it, and it would stay with me, haunting my daytime, too. Dreams flitted off like butterflies if you let them go, and nightmares were no different, only darker moths. "What time is it?"

"Twenty 'til." She turned off the alarm, pulled me into my bathroom and ran a shower, much like she had last evening, only this time she was naked and I was half clothed as the hot water poured over our heads.

I held her close, and she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her face against my shoulder until my shivering stopped. The water ran down my collar and filled the back of the bike shorts I'd slept in, causing it to bubble out obscenely, and Alice giggled and pushed at the fabric until it gushed out one leg.

She pushed me down to my knees, then, and slicked my hair back and sluiced water over my face and shampooed my hair, fingers digging into my scalp, knowing exactly what I liked, and I closed my eyes, letting her move my neck to rinse, but the images hadn't faded from the inside of my eyelids yet, so I kept my eyes open, even though the water burned a bit.

I stood, and washed hers, and played with the suds, making whipped cream puffs on each breast, and she giggled again, and gasped as I played in earnest, sliding over her skin, grasping fingers and slick palms on nipples that swelled with the heat and contracted to my touch, until she was squirming and breathless in the steam, rubbing up against me, bubbles and breasts and skin on the sopping tux shirt that was plastered to my chest. I could feel her through it, but not enough, and I struggled to pull it off.

She laughed at me, and unbuttoned the shirt when I got stuck with my elbows caught all awkward, and we were both laughing and sliding, and then my underwear was at my knees and her mouth was on my dick, and I was wet and slick all over, but then there was suction, hot tongue and lips and hands everywhere, petting sensitive skin, and when I closed my eyes I saw heaven and hazel eyes.

She wouldn't let me reciprocate, some sort of female appointment after school this afternoon, and she needed to very clean, mentally and physically, and I left her alone to get ready for school so that I wouldn't be tempted to put my hands everywhere.

I dressed and grabbed a cup of coffee and found my mother in her sunroom, watching the morning news with the volume low.

"Shh," she whispered. "Carlisle didn't get home until way past midnight." She nodded at the French doors that separated this room and their bedroom.

I kissed her cheek, and handed her a rolled up Ziploc bag, half of what I bought last night.

"Son, that's yours!"

"Mom, don't start." We always had this same song and dance, every time.

"Jasper, I am perfectly capable of buying my own contraband. I did it for years, you know."

"Not in Forks, you haven't. People around here expect seventeen-year-olds to smoke weed. They'll even celebrate the boost to the local economy. But you are a respectable old woman of thirty-nine and holding, and need to maintain your image. Besides, if I'm buying, no one thinks you're growing."

She fussed, and I rolled my eyes, Edward-style.

"Mom, take it for your pink ribbon girls; I'm sure they've gone through what you sent last month."

"Okay. I can take it for them."

"You are so fucking nuts, you know that, Mom?"

"You watch your mouth, young man."

**Alice:  
** I sat in French class, trying not to twiddle my thumbs, my toes, my pencil – I had spent more time in Paris than my teacher, and she did not grasp either the complexities of the culture she pretended to teach, or the depth of the soul of the country; she taught the language, nothing more, and sitting in her class was like listening to someone trying to describe a t-shirt without understanding the feel of cotton against the skin or the muscle shape and bone structure of the body that wore it.

Jasper had a quote on his wall: _Ask an American how old his country is, and he will say, "200 years." Ask a Frenchman, and he will pick up a handful of dirt, pour it in your palm, and ask, "How old is the earth?"_ I couldn't remember who said it.

France was about earth and light and love and the essence of things: a thousand perfumes to dab on the inside of the wrists, too expensive to afford and too perfect not to; structures piled on top of themselves, arches and stones, verdigris and history lurking in every corner; and wine, every bottle as complex as the language. I couldn't wait to show Bella the street in Montmartre that I loved, and Jasper the castle in Saumur, if we had time.

Time. Everything was about time. I was frustrated, itchy: I wanted to speed up the months to June when we would be in France, slow down the weeks until the procedure, and have this day done already, even though it started nicely; but right before school, I caught Rose texting in the parking lot with a peculiar look on her face. She didn't even try to fight me when I swiped her iPhone; Victoria wanted to meet today, at lunch, and I keyed in the response myself, telling her where to meet us, because I was not going to chance Bella being near her, and I couldn't let my sister go alone.

Everything was getting on my last raw nerve, and none of my thoughts lined up in any direction that I could follow. I blew my Chemistry test, erasing three quarters of my answers several times, until Jasper hooked my foot with the toe of his boot and gave me a long look.

Free study passed in a flash. Bella was caught by a poetry bug, lost in a thought bubble, banging the keys on her battered laptop, and Twin watched me from under his brows, finally passing me the half flask from his backpack, and I had a polite nip, but my heart wasn't in it, and I gave it back to him, and the bell rang. Fourth period dragged, and I finally bailed halfway through, claiming cramps, and texted Rose. She responded immediately from her car, and we left to go meet Vicki, half an hour early, without even my tiniest toy harmonica to keep my mind from exploding with the thought that something wrong was going to happen. I put my earbuds in, listening to several covers of "Season of the Witch," trying to pick out a mood or a direction from one of them that I could work into a blues improv, but I got frustrated and turned off my iPhone.

So I stared out the windshield, bored, irritated with myself that that I was so adamant in coming along to babysit my stepsister, who was a foot taller than I was and obviously handling herself fine, and I was chilly from the cold because with three hot showers in the past twenty-four hours, my skin was about to crack like the Great Salt Flats and I couldn't bear to have the heat running in Rosalie's car; the noise from the vents would also inhibit my ability to eavesdrop properly, though I honestly didn't foresee much being said. If my stepsister had wanted to listen to whatever Victoria wanted to say, she would have met her ex-best-friend at a more congenial location than the spot I chose: the parking lot of the visitor's center that doubled as the Forks heritage museum. I admired my subtle territorial statement of the choice of meeting spots, especially the fact that we were across the street from the police station; it was a strategy worthy of Jasper, and that Vicki was obviously uncomfortable when she pulled up in James's Mustang pleased me very much.

Rose leaned back against the hood of her own car and nodded her nose at the redheaded girl, forcing the other to close the distance between them, and I silently thanked my stepsister for the courtesy of including me in their conversation.

Victoria glanced at me, and I looked away. I wished that Jazz could have been here; he was able to gauge moods and diffuse awkward bombs with a casual phrase, or even Edward, who was good at knowing what people were really saying, or really _not_ saying, but neither of them would approve of this meeting, not that I was all that happy about it either. I hated keeping things from Bella, who would be philosophical about it, and it was almost impossible to hide things from my twin brother, who would be furious. In one single adrenaline-charged moment, Rose's best friend had attacked mine; Bella was very lucky that no bones had been broken and she'd had no more internal bleeding than bruises on her legs.

Victoria handed Rosalie a small box, I couldn't see if it was the earrings, but Rose put it in her pocket. She also gave her a few CD's and a shaggy sheepskin coat that I remember Rose buying. My stepsister shook her head, and finally spoke.

"You keep that."

The redhead smiled at the reprieve and put it on, and moved to hug Rosalie, but the blond moved away, already done with the meeting.

"Wait," Victoria said. She glanced toward me, and I glared back. She gave me a rueful smile. "I've something else. It was Jamie's, but I can't bring myself to sell it. I know you've probably got higher end stuff than this, but I know Alice plays a bit of guitar sometimes-"

She turned back to the Mustang and pulled out a Dr Z Mini Z amp, one of the limited edition ones, black with purple metallic flake. I gaped at it, trying not to drool, feeling edgy and guilty for even wanting it, one hand on the door handle, ready to swallow my pride and thank Vicki, but Rosalie's posture shifted, and while she made no move toward the equipment or the other girl, she raised the index finger of the hand that was casually resting behind her back, so I stayed still, frustrated and jumpy, wriggling with the tension and the invisible handcuffs and the static that snapped at my dry hair when I moved my head even the slightest.

"Is this a peace offering?" Rose asked, and by the irony in the tone of her voice I knew her lip would be curled slightly.

"No," the other girl said quietly. "More like a parting gift. Alice was always cool to me; she's the closest I had to a little sister, too."

The blond in the red leather coat said nothing. I bought her that coat, a vintage bomber with sheepskin collar, bing cherry and one shade brighter than her car, from the same shop on the east side of Frankfurt that I bought Twin's green leather motorcycle jacket – not that any of the locals would be seen dead in a second hand store, but I didn't care, it had my stepsister's name all over it. She and Edward were more alike than either would ever admit, loving the clichés and each both fighting and embracing the self- absorption that was needed to pull them off.

"I'm gonna miss you, Rosalie."

Rose said nothing, and waited until the other girl had pulled away before she stowed the returned items and the amp in the trunk of the car.

"You okay?" I asked her as she slipped behind the wheel.

"She's not going anywhere, yet," Rosalie said.

"How do you know?"

"Her locker still has five hundred bucks and her passport stashed in it."

"She's still enrolled?"

Rose nodded.

"Did her aunt write in for an emergency family leave?" I'd learned a lot about school policy recently, trying to figure out what medical absences I could take and still be able to pass my junior year.

Rosalie shrugged and pulled into the school, with ten minutes left for lunch. I curled into Jasper's arms, soothed by the scent of him, leather and boy and the traces of incense from his room, and he snuck kisses under my earlobe while I nibbled on a pear that Bella was going to eat and tried not to think about the appointment after school, which I knew would be fine, and no one asked Rose or me any questions.

**Jasper:**  
I kept my head down in the little waiting room, making eye contact only with the beta fish in the glass bowl by the painting of garish pink flowers. My heart went out to the little guy swimming under his bamboo; he and I were the only males in the room. After two throat clearings from the receptionist, I looked up and noted her pointed glance at the "Please turn off all cell phones while in the waiting room" sign. I didn't bother trying to explain that I was on airplane mode and only playing Tetris; I just mumbled my apologies and took my testicles outside before they withered up in self-conscious shame.

It wasn't that I minded taking Alice to her appointments – I was glad to help. I just felt like a hypocrite when I tried to be sympathetic; I didn't have the parts. I'd seen the pictures and the models in the various offices from Forks to Port Angeles to Seattle, but in my head, a uterus was still a mythical pink place with starry nebulous galaxies inside, expanding and contracting with a big bang.

I wandered down the hall, past the maternity ward, glancing through the glass. Mrs. Randal was sitting in a corner in a rocking chair, a funny smock over her clothes, holding a peachy-skinned baby with a wrinkly face and black hair sticking at odd angles out of his light blue knit cap. She smiled at me, and I waved, but didn't go in. I wondered who the baby was; I'd heard she had a daughter, but I thought she lived in Portland, and this baby looked like he was Native American.

Carlisle's office was just off the ER, and his padded chairs were much more comfortable than the benches in the gynecology waiting room.

I wasn't sure I was ready to have the talk I wanted with my stepfather.

_Hey, Doc, so I was out buying your wife some weed, and came upon a body in the woods –I think you've probably seen him? And I freaked out a little because I've never actually seen a dead guy before, and even though I could tell he was really very dead, I had to make sure and so I checked his pulse. So now my fingerprints are on the body, and the cops are going to want to know why I didn't make a proper report, and I don't exactly want to explain that I was buying a bag of sticky-icky to share with my mother. Any suggestions on what the fuck I should do now? _

I walked down the hall and rounded the corner, stopping short when I heard voices from inside, not wanting to interrupt a consult by opening the partially closed door. Then I recognized who was speaking, and took a quiet step backward.

"Well, I'm going to have to make some kind of statement and call it in to Seattle, so what _can_ you tell me?" asked Charlie Swan.

"Well, there isn't a whole lot, Chief," my stepfather said. "I don't even have a proper T. O. D. because the rigor would have been accelerated due to the cold weather. I'd guess somewhere between noon and three p.m. by the liver temp."

"Cause of Death?"

"Fracture of the fourth cervical vertebrae and resultant asphyxiation from severe damage to the spinal cord."

"A broken neck."

"Yes."

There was a long pause, and I waited, my boots nailed to the floor. A fluorescent light in the hallway hummed and flickered, ominous in a creepy way. It wasn't hard to see why horror movies were filmed in hospitals.

"What aren't you telling me, Carlisle?"

"Look, Charlie, I'm not a forensic scientist, and you know as well as I do that most of what we see on television is either perfectly preserved crime scenes or pure science fiction, but-"

"You're the best I've got, Doc. Spit it out."

"Well, there was no massive trauma to the head. The only skull fractures were to the nasal bone, and the wounds were all indistinct and irregular. There was no rust or paint flakes or wood debris in the wounds, just dirt and sand."

There was another pregnant silence, and as a nurse walked by, I fiddled with my phone, trying to look casual.

"So the torn ear and scalp?" the police officer asked, his voice slow and quiet.

"Yes. I think someone did this with their bare hands."

"It takes a lot of strength for one person to break a man's neck," said Charlie, "or a lot of skill. I don't know too many people in the county who could physically do this."

I stepped backwards, rolling my boots from toe to heel to keep from making any noise, amazed that the noise of my slamming heartbeat couldn't be heard in my stepfather's office. Once I made it around the corner, I flew down the hall, out of the hospital, and to the car and sat there, shaking.

There were _very_ few people in Forks who had the strength and martial arts expertise to break a man's spine.

I was one of them.

I'd done it before.

* * *

Do you remember your dreams?


	7. Jellyfishing

Most of us dream vividly, but not many remember them for long after. I remember two, but they are vague.

ElleCC beta's this odd mess, and Stephanie owns what I don't.

**

* * *

Alice:**  
It wasn't the foot-and-a-half long fluorescent tube they shoved up my female parts and stirred around like my lower half was a mixing pot that bothered me – I wanted the woman in the pretty pink scrubs to start chanting "double double toil and trouble," she was funny and had a mole on the side of her nose that fascinated me, though when she nudged my kidneys I thought I might pee all over her and it wouldn't have bothered me much if I had, at that point – it was the nasty clear jelly goo that got _everywhere_ that made me feel disgusting.

That and the hospital gowns simply sucked ass. Just when you were at your very worst, getting your boobs squished or your puss poked at, why did they have to make you wear something shapeless and uncomfortable that made you feel even more vulnerable and stripped of your femininity? And the fabric was rough seersucker, horrible and scratchy, burning with bleach, and I was itchy, skin brittle and feverish while the gown was open in all the wrong places, leaving me chilled, cold sweat harsh on chafing skin.

They could at least have a belt or something, and some boxer-Capri-knicker-shorts; you could make them sarong style, so they tied on the side for easy access, or with a butt flap, like Jasper's favorite long underwear. Carlisle found those for him, in some weird old man's catalogue, and I'm not sure if I love them for their silliness or hate them for disguising how nicely shaped his ass is, but Jazz is insistent that we Respect The Pajamas, and I have to admit that even in his most ridiculous set, there is nothing more adorable than my boyfriend looking ready for bed.

He wasn't in the waiting room when I came out, and I was a little hurt because even though I felt gross and sticky and unsure if I wanted him to hold me or to never touch me again, I still wanted him _there_. When I turned my phone on to ask him where he was, I had a text waiting:

**The fish isn't good company. He won't share his Doritos. I'm going to the car. I love you.**

A hysterical giggle escaped my mouth, and the receptionist glared at me, so I told the little beta swimming in his bowl that he would make more friends if he shared his snacks, and walked out of building, not stopping at Dad's office, because I just wanted to get away from the industrial walls and the harsh lights and the smell of disinfectant and the business of medicine, where everything that was felt was dissected with big words and sterile one-use disposable gloves and lubricating gel that was impossible to wipe off, no matter how hard you tried.

Jasper was parked right outside the hospital entrance, in the fire lane, leaning up against the Audi, staring off into space, a battered old Stetson worn low on his forehead, his shoulders hunched to his ears, fiddling with something in his hands.

"What are you listening to?" I asked softly.

"Nothing," he said, pulling out his ear buds. "I just didn't want to talk to anyone except you."

He handed me an origami crane made of music paper, and between the staves his handwriting wrapped in and out of the folds. I tried to smile, but he just looked even more worried, his eyes glued to my face as he opened the car door for me.

"How did it go?" he asked when he got in.

"Fine. I'm all clear."

"You don't look fine."

"I am, really."

And it was true. Walking had eased the cramps, and they were gone by the time I'd left the hospital, leaving an empty place where the pain had been. I wanted it back, so that I felt something, hurting somewhere so that I could be angry, but I only felt disassociated from my body, and awkward from the squelching jelly that was cold on my thighs.

On the way home, neither of us said anything; once he stroked a finger down the back of my hand, and I was so hypersensitive, my skin so dry that it hurt, and though I tried not to flinch, he jerked his hand away like I had burned him, and I swallowed back tears.

I opened the crane. It was an instrumental of Edward's, one that he had written for me a long time ago, and Jazz had inked in a harmony in red, with broken verses of my favorite poem by Yeats, "Song of the Wandering Aengus," slowly curling in an eerie descant around a low melody, and he'd written it for me, for my vocal range, the lament of a Celtic god of love looking for a river sprite until time stood still, and the melody reminded me of " Roads" by Portishead. The song wormed its way into my brain, pulling me lower, and I wanted to panic as my mind separated farther from my body, spiraling down and dark blue.

We pulled into the garage, and Jazz helped me out, hand extended like a gentleman, but gripping my fingers, hard.

"Alice," he whispered, in the foyer. "Tell me what you need."

His eyes pierced mine, and I looked away, ashamed that I was making him worry.

"I feel gross," I said, voice low and strange and not my own; nothing was my own, not this hot brittle skin I was about to shatter out of, not my insides that had become public property to poke, measure and analyze and reduce to numbers.

Jasper looked at me for a long moment, and led me to my room, and my bathroom, and turned on the shower, and I wanted to tell him no, my skin was so dry it hurt to be touched, and that four showers in thirty-six hours would make me crack like dry leaves, or a desert snake shedding its scales, except that the slimy gel covering most of my lower half had to go, it was awful and artificial and still cold, and I couldn't understand why this would bother me, this single frivolous thing that took my dignity and my sense of self away from me, and if I couldn't take this, how could I handle the rest of all of it?

But he was stripping me, shirt over my head, two skirt buttons flicked and I was left standing in pink lace, but it was stuck to my skin strangely, stained and twisted in unflattering rumples over all my pretty places, and I couldn't take it, and I started to cry.

He caught my chin in his hand and forced my face up, and wiped my face with his thumb.

"I can't do this," I whimpered.

"Alice," he said, his voice gentle, and I turned away, not wanting to hear him tell me everything was going to be okay, or that I was brave, or that it didn't matter to him what I looked like, and I was already drawing a breath to fight him, but he just asked, "When did you eat last?"

I gaped at him. "I had a bite of Bella's pear, and-"

"No breakfast?" he guessed. He gave me a long look, disapproving, and then hooked his thumbs in my underwear and dropped them to the floor. I undid my bra and stepped into the water.

"I'll be back," he said, and I wanted to cry he'd left me, but I felt stupid, turning into a baby after convincing Dad that I could handle this on my own, a routine scan, when he was right down the hall if anything the least bit abnormal showed up. I needed to be strong, to show them I was adult enough to make logical choices, and not cry, and not make people worry, but the goo on my belly wasn't rinsing off, and I felt helpless and hopeless, wishing I had an autopilot button that I could push to-

"Here." Jasper shoved the curtain aside and handed me a warm mug, and the smell of hot cocoa mixed with the shower steam, and at first I sipped to be polite, but when the sweetness filled my mouth and the warmth invaded my cold brain and empty stomach, I smiled at him in thanks, gulping it down as the hauntings fled, undone by hot chocolate and his eyes.

"Better?" he asked, and his grin contradicted his reproachful eyebrows.

"Yes. Thank you." I felt ridiculous, knowing better than to forget to eat, especially on such a stressful day.

He reached past the steam for one of the many bottles of shower gel and sniffed at it, and then handed it to me. "I like this one."

He left to get a towel, and by the time he came back I had washed and rinsed, and was squeezing the water from my hair. He wrapped me in terrycloth when I got out, and spun me around, facing away.

"Hold out your arm," he said. When I did, he squirted a line of body lotion from my shoulder to my wrist, and I wanted to protest that it was too much, but he smoothed it in with slow hands, palms flat, and it felt delicious, the cool cream and the heat of his hands on my skin, and every pore sucked up the moisture, healing the fragile nerve endings, making them shivery and _aware_. He worked it into my hands, fingers sliding between mine, spreading them and drawing away to push between the next, and if starfish made love that must be how they did it, and my nipples puckered and hardened under the towel, and for some reason I felt shy, embarrassed that he was taking such gentle care of me and I was responding sexually, and he knew me well enough to notice, though he showed no reaction.

"I love your skin," he whispered into my damp ear. "It's the only thing pretty enough to hold all of you."

He moved around me and knelt, setting my foot on his thigh, and the bulge in his jeans told me that he wasn't as dispassionate as he seemed.

"You hold me best," I murmured, leaning with one hand on his shoulder to steady myself , though I nearly lost my balance when he squeezed a large puddle on the top of the foot that was on the floor, surprising me, flashing a teasing smile but not looking up, attention focused on my bent leg. He slicked the lotion up the back of my calf, and back down again, and then up over my thigh with both hands, and moving to the underside, where I was so sensitive, back and forth, gentle pressure, and on the last pass the back of his hand gently rubbed past softer flesh, and I resisted the urge to turn and grind against his fingers. By the time he got to my other knee I was shaking, skin cooled and insides heated, every empty place filled with want of him and his large hands, soft palms and calloused fingertips, running up the back of my thigh, curving under the towel around the cheek of my ass, massaging the body cream into ticklish places, and then he spun me around again, and pulled the towel away.

He worked the towel over my hair, and spread more lotion on my neck and down to the small of my back, fingers digging, easing away the day and every wrong thing that touched me, leaving only me, sculpted by his hands, and I turned, and he rose on his knees on the bath rug, and I leaned down to kiss him, because there was nothing more important at that moment than feeling his lips and tasting his mouth, but he pulled away quickly, keeping it sweet. He slathered the lotion across my collarbone and onto my breasts, kneading my curves and rolling my nipples with his thumbs, and I gave up on restraint and leaned into his palms, gasping, fingers twisting into his curls, watching his face, and the heat of his gaze watching his own hands working my skin. I was human clay, moulded into shape by his hands, existing for no other purpose than to watch his lips part like that, and his tongue flick out to moisten them, and when one hand slid down my belly and the other to the small of my back for support, I gave up on sweet, too, and kissed him hard, pulling his head back and sucking his tongue into my mouth, and when his hand finally cupped around my wet secrets I moaned his name and tugged at the collar of his shirt.

"Shh," he whispered, "this is just for you," and his fingers slid between flesh and fantastic, finding my soul, or at least the part that was only his, stroking with a musician's talent, making my swollen nerves sing.

"I need _you_," I whimpered, denying his words but not his hands. "Make me all yours again."

I didn't want to explain, and he didn't ask me to, and I felt almost ashamed that I needed him as badly as I did, afraid that I was using him selfishly, but he didn't fight me when I knelt on the rug with him, tugging at his clothes, shirt over his head and then jeans undone, pushing at him, breasts sliding over his chest, smooth and slippery with the lotion, and I settled over his thighs, smooth and slippery lower, but hot, too, and he moved his hand and eased inside, pulling out a bit to push deeper, and I took more and more each time, until he was sliding deep, all the way and huge, overwhelming me with the rightness and the pleasure of it all – skin and nerves and flesh pulling together in a steady rhythm that built and built until I was mindless with it, clutching at his skin, biting his shoulder, arching in his arms as the heat and the ecstasy had me gasping and grasping at him inside me and the waves crashed over my belly, spreading through my thighs, my breasts, my toes, my lips. He groaned and joined me, filling me, washing away all traces of anything but him and his claim on my body.

He held me, slowly softening, and helped me clean up, warm wash cloth and laughter, and I kissed his face and he asked, "Better?"

"Much, thank you," I said, nodding.

"Anytime, darl," he drawled, stroking my cheek with a fingertip, and Edward knocked on my bedroom door.

"The guy has impeccable timing," Jazz muttered, buttoning his pants, and leaving me hidden behind the bathroom door.

"Dinner's on in five," Twin called, letting in the smell of garlic and cheese and the delicious earthy scent of baked potatoes, and then he was gone and Jasper was in my closet, flinging random clothes at me, and I threw on a sweater and fresh lace and silk skirt, myself again, and hungry.

**Jasper:  
** Confucius said: "_Silence is the true friend that never betrays,"_ but my band members were betrayed by their own silences, their tension giving voice to internal struggles. We'd talked last night at dinner about our expectations for the summer, dodging the obvious elephants like Alice's procedures and recovery time and how the hell we were going to distribute our album without a label to back us, focusing instead on practical matters like renewing our passports, travelling with a grand piano, and making sure our equipment would convert to European current.

So today we were a somber bunch, poking at overcooked cafeteria pizza, still a little overwhelmed by who we were about to become. Emmett was pensive, rolling an orange back and forth in his hands, and Rosalie defiant, feet up on the chair, scowling at nothing. Bella was Bella, shields up and eyes down, and Edward was protective of his girls, instinct seating him next to his girlfriend and across from mine, relaxing only when I slid into place next to Alice.

I found myself retreating to silence, too, not out of cowardice, but because there is a heightened observance that comes with keeping one's pie-hole shut. I felt a little guilty. I'd been so focused on Alice, not letting anything negative touch her, keeping dark things like fear and dead bodies not _secret_, but simply quiet for the time being. I'd tell her when she seemed stronger.

She did seem delicate today, and her clothes magnified her fragile aura, some pale purple filmy silk thing, too thin for January, but her face was warm with a smile for me, and she seemed completely recovered from yesterday's frightening apathy, though it bothered me that she was quiet at the moment. Some things, like humming birds and angelfish and my girlfriend, were meant to be kinetic, in perpetual motion, not this stillness that reeked of insecurity.

I looked at them all, frustrated by their reluctance to embrace the impossible, their hesitation to believe that we could pull this off. We weren't just kids anymore, with pipe dreams and fantasies of being rockstars; it was happening now, and we needed to step up and claim it. I stared at them, feeling the dangerous separation between us, and targeted the toughest nut to crack.

"So, Bella," I said, startling her out of whatever world she was drifting in. "When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

She grinned, game. "Well, when I was six I wanted to be a Rockette. Then I took a dance class and decided I would be a radio deejay instead."

Edward laughed and his spine unkinked as he relaxed in the hard school chair.

"Emmett wanted to be an astronaut," Alice said. The big guy nodded.

"Mom made me a helmet out of two nesting bowls pegged together at the sides, so it opened and closed," he said, grinning as he peeled his orange, making one long strip of the rind. "I wore it all the time."

Bella looked at Edward.

"Racecar driver," he said, looking sheepish.

"I am so not surprised," she said, voice like sour candy, and we all laughed.

It was working; they were loosening up and reconnecting, a group again.

"Sister-Lover?" asked Emmett.

"Pirate," said Rose.

"Oooh," approved Emmett.

"I wanted to be a trapeze artist and a fireman," Alice volunteered.

"Fighting arson by day and starring in the circus at night?" Bella asked.

"Oh, no! Both at the same time," my girlfriend explained, and something in my chest eased at her giggle. "You know, swinging from ladder to rooftop, rescuing kids and puppies from burning buildings, doing flips in the air and bouncing on the trampoline. Can you imagine the outfits?"

Even Rose grinned, and Edward and I shared a relieved glance.

"All right, maestro, what about you?" he asked.

I'd wanted to be a samurai, or a lordless ronin, with a secret identity, roving the land, playing-

"I wanted to hustle chess games for money, like those weird old men in Central Park."

Emmett snorted. He usually beat me three games out of five.

"Fuck you, Buzz Aldrin," I huffed. "At least I still live my dream. I don't see your ass on the moon."

"I'll show you the moon," he said, standing up, but thankfully the bell rang in time, and we all left for our classes, laughing easy, harmony restored.

**Alice:**  
We stopped off at Bella's so that she could get school clothes for tomorrow; the chief was working the late shift and uncomfortable with her in the house alone at night, and she wasn't about to miss a chance to sleep in the same bed as my brother, not that Charlie suspected, or if he did, he wasn't fighting the inevitable. I figured it was the latter, he wasn't a stupid man, so perhaps like my own father, Bella's dad didn't care as long as his daughter was safe; after all, he married Renee straight out of high school. He understood the force of young love.

Bella wanted to fix him a quick dinner and pack him a lunch – what do you call your meal break when you work the graveyard shift, anyway? You've already had dinner as your first meal, and you go to bed after eating breakfast. They should have proper names for things like that, a portmanteau word like brunch, maybe _chunnel_ or _lunder,_ something like-

"Alice, I'm glad you're here," Charlie said. "I've a bit of a mystery on my hands, and I think there is something you can help me with."

He pulled a little notebook out of his pocket, and I grinned because he reminded me of those old time TV cop shows where the detective makes notes all the time with a stubby pencil and a hard New York accent, not like the new shows where everyone has a BlackBerry or an iPhone, and I grinned harder, trying to imagine Chief Swan with a fancy phone, blunt fingers hovering over a touch screen.

His eyebrows rose and the moustache quirked at one side.

"This is your phone number, right?" he tapped the page.

I nodded, curious.

"Someone called you last Sunday evening from the payphone at the diner. Do you remember getting the call?"

"Sure," I said, pointing to the living room where the guys were sitting watching television, hypnotized by Bob Ross painting happy little trees on the PBS station out of Port Angeles. "It was Jazz. He called asking me to call his cell phone. He thought he might have lost it somewhere, but it had slid under the passenger seat."

Jasper looked up at the sound of his name, and wandered into the kitchen where we were talking. Charlie looked at him for a long moment, but excitement tightened the chief's features a little.

"Son," he began, and my boyfriend's spine straightened slightly. "Did you have to wait to use the phone booth? Was anyone on the phone when you went to make the call?"

Jasper shook his head, and took a deep breath and exhaled part way before speaking, a trick I'd seen him do when he was trying to keep his voice from cracking. "No, sir."

"Well, damn," Chief Swan muttered, deflating. "Was anyone around, outside the diner? No little kids or anything?"

Jasper shook his head, eyes wide.

"Sometimes a few boys from the middle school hang out there; maybe you remember any of them that night?" Charlie was fishing, but Jasper still shook his head.

"No, sir," he said again, trying to keep a smile from his face. "No little kids."

Bella's dad nodded, disappointed. My best friend came down the stairs then, overnight bag over her shoulder, and Jasper picked up her book bag like a gentleman. I pulled Twin off the couch, away from Bob's titanium-white fluffy clouds in the distance, and we moved to the door.

"Listen, guys, do me a favor," Charlie said, hands shoved into his pockets. "Stick together and stay close to town, would you? No hiking in the woods for a while."

"Dad said the same thing!" I said, laughing. "Like we're going camping in January? Brrr. No thanks. Did someone get mauled by a bear? Is that what had Dad rushing off the other night? He never did say who died. I'm guessing it was a stranger, or it would be all over town by now. Was it a hiker? It's not really bear season, though, is it? They hibernate this time of-"

Jasper had me by the hood of my coat, and was dragging me out the door, so I waved to Charlie, and he waved back, looking bemused.

We piled into Edward's Volvo, Jasper doing his usual jackknife move that landed him sprawled out in the back seat in one fluid movement, pulling me to settle in the crux between his legs, my head tucked under his chin. I tried to pull the seatbelt over us both, but he'd leaned forward, smushing me a bit, and snagged the blue ballpoint pen that was holding up Bella's hair.

"Hey," Edward protested, scowling in the rearview.

"I need a pen, and you like her hair down," Jazz said.

"Yeah, but I'm the only one who-"

"Just shut up and drive, Bro."

The tips of Bella's ears turned red, but my brother settled down when she stroked her hand down his leg, and he pulled out of the Swans' driveway. Jasper shifted behind me, and uncapped the pen with his teeth. He raised his right knee, pulling his faded jeans taut across his leg, and wrote:

_"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods." _–Waldo

"Waldo?" I asked.

He nodded, capping the pen and flinging it up to the front of the car, landing it nicely on the dash.

"Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dude, good song! Turn that up."

Twin obliged, and we screamed our heads off to Jet, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," laughing, silence and divine whispers forgotten.

* * *

What do you want to be, when you grow up?


	8. Flying

Sorry that I was a bit slow on this update. Holidays and all – I hope yours were happy.

Most of us want to be and do things that take brains rather than brawn. This doesn't surprise me; we're a clever bunch. I want to be a sculptor if I ever grow up.

Legna beta'd this for me, while ElleCC took a break.  
Stephenie owns what I don't.

**

* * *

Jasper:**  
"They are acting like children!" Charlie Swan proclaimed, and the moustache settled over his scowl, mirroring the discontent of his brows.

He was not referring to us, even though Bella and Alice hadn't stopped giggling for almost ten minutes – mostly at Embry, who was wearing a leather coat that was so heavy with beaded embroidery and fringe that his shoulders were stooped over – nor the rest of the Q'Wolves, who were cutting up at a table towards the back of Aro's restaurant, or even thirteen-year-old Seth, who came for the ride, but wouldn't speak to anyone but Edward or Jake.

Billy Black and Carlisle sat on opposite sides of the room, each at their own table for two, pointedly ignoring the other.

"You're welcome to sit with us, sir," I offered, hoping that he wouldn't. It had been six days since I made the call from the phone booth, and my voice had not broken around the chief yet, but there was no telling when it would betray me.

"I feel like I'm back in junior high," he muttered, sitting at his own small table. "You go ahead and have fun; I need to talk to Mr. Wavy Gravy there."

The artistic director of the Delta Blues Festival stood near Aro's giant piano, exchanging pleasantries with the owner. They were a strange pair; the fat hippie looking nervous and uncomfortable in his huge multi-colored sweater was a sharp contrast to Aro, who was at ease in his tailored Italian suit. The tie-dyed man may have been running the show, but it was obvious who was financially backing it. I nodded to both of them, and Aro raised his hand but didn't stop talking.

Breaking Dawn and the Quileute Wolves were meeting with a few of the execs from the Festival to start hammering out the details of the summer tour kick-off. The popularity of the fall event and the following concert series had spurred the decision to have the four finalists from the fall concert open the Q'wolves tour with a big show on Memorial Day weekend. The other acts, Siobhan and Liam, and the Denali Coven were already signed, but since Sam Uley, and Emmett and Rosalie were the only ones in our groups that were over eighteen, we had to meet with parents to go over rules and sign letters of intent.

I sat down with the girls, and their laughter eased into my tension like a balm for sore muscles. They were excited, and dressed to show it. Bella was in some tattered T-shirt hoodie thing that seemed to hide her cleavage though wound up accentuating it. I was caught in the age-old guy's dilemma of openly ogling my best friend's girl's tits, or rudely ignoring them, so I politely admired Alice's fashion handiwork on the top, making the brunette grin and blush and my girlfriend swat my ass.

"I like this, too," I said, tweaking the silky fabric of Alice's dress, some gauzy dark stuff that looked purple or green in the light, depending on how she moved. She was quiet tonight and it worried me a little, but the dress wasn't really black and she was wearing fake feathery eyelashes that were silly and sexy at the same time, and her smile was generous and mine.

Em and Edward brought in the last pieces of equipment and stashed them in the corner, joining us just as Felix came for our order. It was early in the evening, and the dinner crowd wouldn't be in until later, so we were taking care of business now, and we would play after we ate. I was anxious to try out a few songs from the new album; several hadn't been heard before an audience yet. We hadn't had an open jam session since the Halloween party, though most of our regulars would be showing up tonight.

"So, you guys ready to be rock stars?" said a familiar voice behind me.

"Santiago!" Alice bounced in her chair, and I shot a brief admonishing glance at Emmett, who already started to glower, not that he wasn't within rights, as the Volturi Guard drummer was already leaning in to gawk at Rosalie. "Congratulations on the new single! It hit our local station two weeks ago. I love Alec's voice on the solo! How far do you think it will go in the charts? iTunes has you listed pretty high up in the popularity rankings, I'm surprised they only have you as a ninety-nine cent song, rather than the higher bracket like your first single, or was it up to you? Are Corin and Demetri here, too?"

"Wow. Hi, Alice!" he said, grinning at her. She took another breath to speak, but Edward cut in, smooth and quick.

"He's here as a producer, Twin. The previous festival winner always has a spokesman on the board of directors, right?" He looked to the short drummer for confirmation.

"Yeah, but actually, I wanted to talk to you about some marketing strategies for _our_ tour, after we deal with all this."

"That would be good," I said. "Some friends of ours want to put together a webpage. They'll be here tonight. He writes code and she shoots fuckawesome video…" I stopped at his skeptical look.

"Angela did Bella's "Running up that Hill" YouTube bit from the fall trials," Emmett said, and I shot him another look, warning him to lay off his smug tone.

"I've seen that," Santiago exclaimed, smiling at Bella's blush. "That was done by a kid?!"

I sat back in my chair, and folded my arms. The rest of the band was silent, and I looked at the older musician, letting the tension at the table rise.

"Yeah, okay," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "That was out of line. I forget how old you are, guys. You don't sound like kids, and so I don't think of you that way."

No wonder he was the spokesman for his band, I thought. He could turn an insulting gaffe into a compliment with the ease of a salesman.

Our food came, and he left to go talk to Aro and the director.

"He's slick," said Edward, eyes narrowed at his back.

"I don't mind being underestimated," Emmett said.

"Well, I do. And Rosalie _hates_ it," Alice contradicted him, her voice low. At Rosalie's look she rushed on, "You do, Rose. You get irritated as hell anytime anyone assumes you are a back-up singer just because you are a girl and gorgeous. What you like is the ego rush when you get to blow everybody's mind - and I can't wait until people get over the fact that you have tits and actually start listening to how good you are rather than trying to reconcile the two - but what I'm worried about is that Volturi Guard really _has_ underestimated us. When Tropic of Virgo goes up, we're going to have a huge following that isn't going to want us to leave that stage, and isn't going to stick around to see them perform. What happens when they want to kick us off the tour because they don't like the competition? We don't have a contract because we are minors, nor do we have a label to back us up!"

"Slow down, little sister," Emmett laughed. "Let's get to Europe first. _Then_ we can conquer the world." He stood up and walked off to the bar to get a refill from Felix. Rose followed, after giving Alice a long look.

Alice fidgeted, annoyed that Emmett wasn't taking her seriously, and Bella gnawed on her lower lip. Edward and I shared a silent conversation over the table, and his dark smile could have shown fangs.

"He doesn't see it, yet, Twin," my stepbrother said. "He'll come round."

"First we take Manhattan," I said, quoting Leonard Cohen under the din of the restaurant.

"_And then we take Berlin_." Their voices melded, three separate octaves joining perfectly on the chorus, eerie and threatening and we grinned at each other in wicked anticipation.

**Alice:**  
"So can I ask why Vladimir backed out of the summer tour?" Bella asked Santiago, from across the table, and he hastened to swallow his last bite of dessert. He'd eaten with the Q'wolves, but joined us after, ever the diplomat.

"Actually," he said, wiping a smear of cheesecake from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, "Our label encouraged us to part ways."

"Why?" asked Rosalie, smiling sweetly when he didn't seem about to explain, and none of us looked at one another, not wanting to laugh out loud. My stepsister _never_ flirted.

"Well, it's kind of a funny story, but it can't go any further than this table…"

"Of course not," Rosalie simpered, and I kicked her foot, because she was laying it on a bit thick.

"So they were filing for their passports, and the lead singer's kept getting delayed, so our manager makes a few calls to see what was up, and it turns out the guy is wanted for questioning in a breaking and entering investigation in Portland. Then we found out that the guitarist owes thirty thousand dollars in unpaid child support and Geffen made it clear that we didn't want to start out the tour already doing damage control."

"How did the Vladimir guys take it?" asked Emmett.

"Pretty well, actually. We're helping them to produce their first album," the shorter drummer answered.

"Even though the label doesn't approve of them?" Edward asked him.

"Oh, the label likes them fine. They'll make money on the criminal image, if it's marketed right. It's just hard to control media spin when you are on the road." He looked at each one of us, gaze moving around the table, eyebrows cocked in warning.

"We have passports," Jasper said, his body tense. I too felt chastised and irritated with the drummer, but then I glanced at Bella, questioning, realizing I'd never asked if she had a passport. She nodded.

"And you have clean records, too." Santiago grinned. "We checked."

"Yeah, mine were expunged," Jasper said, smiling back.

"Shit!" Embry yelled from the next table, as a tiny hailstorm of glass and mother of pearl beads cascaded to the floor from a snapped string on his jacket. "I mean crap. Or crud."

We all froze as the little things scattered everywhere underfoot. Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes, Jared grimaced, and Jacob laughed openly at Embry's tragic pout. Seth dove for the floor and grabbed at several that were rolling toward the center of the room – the first time he'd left Jake's side all evening, except to say hello to Edward - and we all bent to pick up the ones under our shoes; I grabbed the saucer from the teacup at my place setting and passed it around to collect the stray beads. Some were black shell tubes, but most were red or white or clear with silver lining.

There was a muffled thud from the floor to my right, and Bella and Quil sat up groaning, both rubbing their heads where they had knocked them together, and we all laughed, and then Bella called out to Jared to hold still, there was one wedged in his boot above the heel, but then she gasped and scrambled to her feet, still holding the clear light blue piece of glass in her blood smeared fingertips.

"This one's sharp," she complained.

"Jeez. It must have broken," Embry said, and I wasn't sure if his dejected tone was for Bella's benefit or for his jacket.

Jasper made a noise beside me and moved very fast, grabbing Bella's hand, and taking the piece from her fingers. He stared at the drop of blood, going quite pale, in that startling way that blonds do, and clamped her wrist in his hand, jerking it over her head.

"It's just a tiny little cut," she protested.

"Glass cuts deeper than you'd realize," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "You need to clean it before it infects."

Edward elbowed him out of the way and stepped between them, taking her hand in his and looking for Carlisle, while Bella just shook her head at both of them. Jasper moved off, but his spine was still rigid, and I was about to go to him, but Rosalie moved faster.

"Easy, little brother," she murmured, nudging his shoulder with hers.

He closed his eyes and nodded, and she ruffled his hair and caught my glance. I moved to his other side and slipped my arm around his waist, and he forced himself to relax, flashing a wry smile that didn't meet his eyes. I stroked his arm and he covered my hand with his, and at the pressure of his fingers I felt the long scar on his arm and understood his stress; the thin ridge of hardened flesh running from elbow to shoulder, made by a broken bottle when he was twelve.

"She's fine," I whispered, and he nodded, one hand snaking around my back, and I anticipated and turned a bit so he got a handful of boob and that made him laugh a little, and the color eased back into his face. Then Aro's nine year old daughter flew into the room, running straight toward Bella, who was stuck between Twin and Dad, both of them hovering over her finger, and Jane waved hello and asked why they didn't just put a band-aid on it, and I snickered in agreement.

The festival dude fussed, and I saw where this was going, that he would see this as chaos and that we were all a bunch of unruly kids and he would decide to give the Denali Coven the cameo spot at the concert this spring, and Santiago would retract a lot of the freedom he'd given us, deciding we weren't mature enough to make our own choices and limit what-

"Seth," Jasper called out into the awkward discordance of the room, "Why don't you play the piece you and Edward have been working on?" He nodded to the huge piano, and the younger boy smiled, shy but eager, and ran his fingertips down the last octave of dark ivories on the imperial grand.

Seth sat down, and rushed into a version "House of the Rising Sun," - a silly piece for a kid to play – but then he slowed down on the second run with more complex chords, and even slower on the next as he got comfortable and started to have fun with it, and my brother's grin was triumphant and Jasper's was smug as the hippie dude's scowl eased into delight, his perception of us as a rowdy bunch of teenagers shifting as even the youngest of us displayed such refined talent, and even Jacob lost his irritation with the clingy boy, looking at him like he'd never seen him before. I wondered how long it would be before Seth would be pulled into the Q'wolves.

The mood in the room eased pleasantly, and Dad and Billy Black exchanged a glance of respect, and I figured if they could be charitable so could I, so I dug in my purse for the little sewing kit I kept, and found a needle, and waved Embry over, replacing as many of the beads as I could on the dangling string of his jacket, and tied off a thread on the back that hung loose from on the tip of an ear of an abstract animal, concentric white and red soft-edged triangles formed of beads, primitive and complex at the same time, and I was struck by how strange Native American art always seemed, so delicate and feral at once.

Something about the Quileute folks stumped me; I never had any idea what they would do or how they would react. Just when I thought Seth would implode with timidity, he stepped up to the piano, and his sister Leah was a complete mystery, snapping and growling at the boys, refusing to take part in any interaction except the music, and Jake Black was a complete wild card, chafing at Sam's leadership of the band, but always taking his direction in the end.

"You are not so unlike the Wolf," Sam Uley said, as if summoned by my thoughts, sliding into Jasper's seat next to me, and tracing one finger around the eye of the embroidered animal. "You change your skin just as much as they do, don't you?"

I looked at him, shocked. I wasn't sure he had ever spoken to me aloud before. We'd met at the festival a few times, but he always spoke to Jasper, not me, treating me like the curious child that parents display for amusement at a formal luncheon, though it was funny to think of him at a dinner party; he needed to be in the woods, dressed in flannel and leather and leaves and tattoos, there was something strange about him that always seemed to be running, pacing, and even his talking to me was a stop on his making rounds of the room.

"I am always myself," I said firmly, not knowing if I should be flattered or insulted by his comment.

"Though you look like Bayaq, the Raven, with your hair of black feathers and his far-seeing eyes," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Are you a trickster like him?"

I stared at him, trying to figure him out. His eyes were friendly, dark sable with gold flecks in them, but I couldn't see past them or where he was trying to take the strange conversation. Weren't ravens a portent of death? I shivered, wondering if he was high, uncomfortable at his nearness and the strange musk that rolled off his skin, sweat and male and a little bit of wet hair smell; I wasn't the wolf at the table, he was, and I squirmed in my seat, looking around the room for Jasper. I caught Edward's eye instead, and after he read my face, his gaze jerked above my head and focused behind me and back, and then familiar hands were pulling me out of the chair, away from Sam, into warm arms and he spun me over to the piano as Seth started to play Edward's arrangement of "The Year of the Cat," fingers hesitant on the keys –

"Dance with me," Jazz whispered, and I was lost in him, instantly, the easy lilting piano notes spinning me as much as his hands, and everywhere his eyes landed on my face I felt kissed, and I was myself again, alive in his light.

**Jasper:**  
The girls were on the stage, opening for us with Melissa Etheridge's _Royal Station 4/16_, and I sat down at the only empty chair, the one across from Charlie Swan, to watch them from the audience. They were playing well, but I was still uncomfortable, and I squirmed, trying to figure out where my unease was coming from, but following the chief's grimace at the next table, I discovered Sam, Santiago, and Jacob Black all perched on the edge of their chairs like vultures. Santiago had a thing for Rosalie, it was almost a running joke to everyone but Emmett, and I was excruciatingly aware of Sam's barely veiled fascination for Alice, but I raised an eyebrow at Charlie for an explanation to Jake's fixation on Bella.

"Poor kid," he muttered under the music, with a shrug.

"Which one?"

"Jake." He grinned. "She looks just like her mother."

My confusion must have shown.

"Renee used to watch him when they were small. Probably the closest thing he's had to a mother."

I nodded, and hid my smile, suddenly amused at the sight of Edward skulking in the shadows, glaring at the younger boy.

"She even sounds like her," Charlie said, so softly I could barely hear him.

I left him to his nostalgia as the song came to a close, Alice wailing out the ending with the force of a freight train, hips wiggling her little caboose around the stage, sexy enough to make the steam come out _my_ ears, and I fought to keep my face clear as I grabbed my bass.

"Get used to it, fucker," Edward said in my ear, and I nodded.

"Huh," Emmett said, no less irritated.

"So what are we doing first, boss?" Edward said, "Something they know, or something they don't?" He was still annoyed, and I smirked at them both, deciding to use their antagonism for good. I stepped up to the mic, and took a breath, letting it out partially, to steady my voice.

"Evening, folks," I said, and the crowd clapped and then settled down as I lowered my voice, "This is new one for us, originally done by our favorite Irish honky-tonk techno band, A3-"

Lauren Mallory's distinctive whistle cut through the room, and I winked in that direction, and then gave a slight nod to Angela Weber, who raised her camera to her face.

I held up my hand to get the attention of the band, and then dropped it, hard, and Bella came in, song bird with full force, Alice rising above, Edward in low baritone:

_"Fly with me…  
C'mon, fly with me…"_

I cued Emmett's spoken word, pushing him a little to make it punchy, to catch the audience's attention: _This is your captain speaking!_

And Edward caught my groove and felt what I was doing, and he skunked in the first line, accusatory, using the latent jealousy to roughen his voice:

_"Cigarette burns on the sofa-"_

And Bella countered, stalking forward, voice like a tarnished silver flute:

_"Whiskey on my new linoleum floor-"_

And they argued through the song, each line challenging the other, and it was a lover's quarrel and grudge sex and the audience ate it up, rocking in their seats and laughing, and at the bridge Alice charged at me barefoot, one shoe in her hand, acting out Em's talking narration, and I pulled it out of her hands and dipped her and kissed her, and she spun away to twirl around Rose on her solo, and I played on, letting them fly.

* * *

Did you get what you wanted this year?


	9. Smoke in Mirrors

Most of us got what we wanted this holiday. Perhaps those of us that didn't get a certain young actor tied up with a bow were a bit too naughty this year, hmm...?  
I got chocolate, and time to write, and it was _exactly_ what I wanted.

ElleCC made my messy words nice. She and LVP are posting "The First Breath" for the support Stacie auction; go read it, it's Jasperlicious.  
Stephenie owns what I do not.

* * *

Alice:  
I woke up, wondering what had pulled me from the wispy fingers of my strange dreams, but the bed was empty, so I slid into pajamas and followed the scent of caffeine to the kitchen where Jasper wasn't, but Edward was, dressed for a run.

"Save me some," he said, nodding to the fresh made pot.

"Dad didn't make it, did he?" I asked in horror. Between the Friday night gig at Aro's and yesterday's hard day of practice and the evening's even harder debauchery, I'd lost track of my father's shift rotation.

He shook his head. "He's still asleep. Jazz started it. And could you tell him to put a little more clothes on before he wanders around the house? Bella's here."

I nodded absently, rummaging through my convoluted memories of last night, a few images of Rose trying to show Bella how to play guitar, but her hands were smaller than even mine, even though she had relatively normal-sized feet, and could wear adult shoes, which wasn't fair. We decided to name James's mini amp, and after heated discussion eventually christened it "Jolene" - though the Emmett wanted to call it "Fanny" - claiming it for Breaking Dawn as spoils of war. Jazz had made a dozen origami cranes from the foils of chocolate kisses, and glued them to his wall around a line of Shakespeare, and Edward made blender drinks, serving them in fancy glasses with whipped cream and cherries for us, but in mason jars on the rocks for them, in order to preserve their manhood. There was a soundtrack with drifting melodies and laughter to last night's revelry, but the final images of Jasper did not involve clothes. I frowned at my slow-moving thoughts, wondering if I had a hangover.

Twin smiled and handed me a glass of water. I drank it down, grimacing as it hit my belly.

"You partied pretty hard last night, little girlie. Even Emmett was impressed."

"Crap! You made piña coladas! I didn't drink any, did I? Alcohol is a blood thinner, and I'm not supposed to have any for a week before…"

"Relax. I made you virgin drinks. You just got so high you made your own constellation."

I breathed a somewhat embarrassed sigh of relief. Dad would have killed me if I'd gotten drunk. Actually, he wouldn't have, he would have just shaken his head a little and let his lips go thin and berate himself for being a bad father, and started second-guessing himself and how much choice he'd let me have in all this, and then decide that I was not mature enough to make the decisions I had, and then he'd back out of everything we'd fought so hard for-

"Alice." Edward shook my shoulders a little, and then spun me around and hugged me back to his chest. I tried to keep the gob of emotion and fear and stupidity from rising out of my throat, but it didn't work, and my face got hot with tears. My brother backed up, still holding me, and maneuvered onto a barstool, pulling me onto his lap sideways, legs to the left, rocking me, the way he used to when I was little and scraped my knees. I curled up into a ball against him and sobbed, feeling self-indulgent and mad at myself, annoyed that one day I could take charge of my life and the next all I wanted was…

"I miss Mom," I said, pathetically, rubbing my wet face on the shoulder of my pajamas.

"Yeah, no shit, right?" I could feel him nod his head above me. "Me, too."

He squeezed me tighter, and laid his head on top of mine, facing the other way. I closed my eyes for a moment, just breathing. Mom used to laugh when she saw us like this, she said this is how we were inside her, and she even had some weird smeary black-and-white ultrasound picture where she would point out which miniscule foot belonged to whom, and Edward would tease me because my tiny fist was up to my face, obviously-

"No thumb sucking," Twin muttered, and I sniffed and giggled and slid off his lap, grabbing two coffee mugs from the hooks on the cabinet.

"Go get your run on before Bella wakes up."

He nodded and was out the door.

I got an ice cube from the dispenser and sucked on it while splashing my face with cold water, a trick I learned from Bella to tame redness, and then I spat it into the sink as the brain freeze made my stomach twist. I peeked into the garage, and Jazz's car was still there, and there were no lights on in the basement. It was too cold for sitting on the patio or porch and watching whatever Jasper saw in his head as he wrote harmony, so there was only one other place he might be. I filled the two cups and headed up to my room.

Esme had designed me a studio as a bribe and a peace offering and though I had been pissy about it at the time - because it didn't seem fair that she was allowed to share my dad's bedroom when they were going at it like rabbits on ecstasy and I wasn't allowed to share her son's when we weren't - as soon as she finally let me see it I fell in love with the space, and maybe her a little bit, too. Half the floor was rugged, with a bed and a drafting table up against wide windows looking toward the river, and the other half was hardwood, with mirrors lining the wall behind the ballet barre. I used the mirrors more for dress fittings than I did dancing, but sometimes-

Jasper was there, wearing white bike shorts and a Sherpa hat, doing one of his karate exercises, though he would be quick to point out that it was kung-fu, and Chinese not Japanese. He caught my eye in the mirror, and flashed a quick smile of hello, but didn't break his concentration. I set down his mug on my high table for cutting fabric, and settled into the quilts on my bed with the bound volume of half-toned charcoal paper that served as diary, pillow book and sketchpad.

"Iron Man," he'd explained once, some sort of muscle and control training where one maintained a difficult stance for a long time. This morning he was in a "horse" form, spine straight but his feet apart and his knees bent low. Every so often he would glance at his reflection and adjust the angle of his back. His breathing was even, measured, but slightly labored with the exertion, and a thin sheen of sweat glittered on his skin, catching at the lazy morning light.

I grabbed a white pencil and followed it, the thin contour outlining his form like the glowing edges of a crescent moon, just one day off new. His face was half hidden by the hat and his hair, which was long enough to cover most of his neck, and I blurred most of it, only highlighting his cheekbone and barely defining the angle of his jaw and down the light that teased at a cord of muscle on his neck that met with his shoulder, and faded into a shadowed plane of his chest. He was broad across his torso, and lean, hard with muscle, not bulky with it, and I traced in the upper edges, laying in the white charcoal to form the surfaces that caught the light along the right side of his body, filling the left side of my grey paper, mirroring only the morning on his skin. I drew down, almost feeling the ripples of sinew and flesh under my fingertips, past his narrow waist and to the jut of his hipbone, and then on to his leg, where foreshortening hid his thigh behind his knee and heavy calf. After roughing in the detail of his toes, I mimicked the same angle on his arm, parallel to his upper leg, and then his hand, large with forced perspective.

I loved the way drawing from life cleared my head, allowed me to focus on one single thing, not unlike Jasper and his exercises in control, pushing his body to his mind's will, nerves aligned and entire body striving for a single purpose.

He straightened slightly, his breathing deeper, and the tension shook his body just a fraction. I wondered how long he had been at this, and switched to a soft black charcoal pencil, laying in the shadows that curved around the left side of his body, building shape and weight with shading in the furrow between bicep and tri, and a fading contour line that defined the mass of his forearm and heavy fist, broad knuckles detailed by their shadows. I followed the edge of his body, quickly, as he adjusted again, feathering in definition of his abdomen muscles, deeper where hip met thigh, and inward-

Jasper stood with a groan, and I whimpered, the drawing incomplete, but he chuckled, and then exploded into a flurry of motion, hands flat and arms in big sweeping movements and lunging steps that I recognized as some sort of bird form, working out the joints that he'd held rigid for so long.

He slowed, rolling his neck, and walked over to my bed and kissed me, and then took the second cup of coffee and sipped.

"Is it still hot?" I asked.

"Perfect," he nodded, and then tweaked the book from my hands. "That's good. I like the light on the foot."

"I didn't get to finish it," I pouted.

"Yeah, but it shows why it's called Horse stance. See?" He traced an invisible line of the animal with his fingertip, the curve of its back under his legs, arms raised to hold reins, and then he pulled away, eyes flashing.

"What?" I asked, thinking that he was mostly naked and wondering if I had morning breath.

"They're frying bacon."

I swatted his ass, and he tumbled me back onto the bed, biting my neck with a mock growl, murmuring "I'm hungry" into my skin, thickening groin grinding against my thigh, a double entendre to his need for breakfast, and I giggled and fought back and scissored my legs around his and rocked into him, hands on his back, sliding my palms down his skin, fingertips tracing the jagged lines of scars.

"Jazz?" I whispered.

"Alice?" he whispered back, growing still.

"How long did they take to heal?" I asked, stroking my index finger down the worst of the ridges on his shoulder.

He pushed the hair off my forehead, and stared at my face a moment, but I couldn't meet his eyes. He sat up, and pulled me with him.

"The clean ones took a month or two. The ones that got infected took a lot longer." His voice was calm and had a bit of humor to it. He caught my chin under his hand and lifted my reluctant gaze to his. I was embarrassed, knowing my face was turning red, not the pretty blush that flooded Bella's at the drop of an innuendo, but the deeper crimson of shame, that I would be so vain about a few routine surgical scars when he was covered in marks of an attack that could have killed him.

He reached out for my sketching journal pointed to this morning's picture.

"Why don't you draw them?" he asked, pointing to his unblemished two-dimensional arm, fingertip hovering an inch off the page, careful to keep from smearing the charcoal.

"I guess I don't really see them anymore," I mused, hoping he wasn't offended. I loved his scars, warrior's badges that kept him from being too perfect, too close to heaven to touch.

"Exactly." He smiled into my eyes, and kissed my nose, and hauled me to my feet. "Let's go eat breakfast."

"Hey, put some pants on first."

**Jasper:**  
Seth's Sunday morning lesson went well, much to Edward's relief; my stepbrother had found a bunch of tunes that caught the kid's interest, and he kept his head on planet earth throughout most of the hour.

His pale skin now told a different story, and his darting eyes focused everywhere but me.

"C'mon, kid," I said, touching his shoulder. He flinched, and his eyes flicked to me for a second, but his neck was stiff and he didn't move.

"Dammit, Seth," Collin said, rapping his knuckles on the glass, "Get out of the car." He was a thick kid, older than he looked, but I still wondered if he was old enough to drive. The Reservation kids had blurry lines about licenses, but even Charlie Swan looked the other way.

Seth's tension really bothered me; I was already edgy, and instead of being annoyed at him, I found myself wanting to defend him from the other boy.

Collin pulled on the door handle, but I left the outer lock on, letting it be Seth's choice to open the door.

"What the fuck, dude!" The boy outside slapped his open hand on the top of my car, pissing me off. I pulled away from the diner, spraying gravel on the kid, who shook both fists at me, middle finger raised upright. Three plates of cookies slid around the back seat, but didn't spill.

"This is not going to help the Cullen and Quileute relationship," I told Seth, sighing. He glanced at me, saying nothing, but his deathgrip on his music book lessened.

I pulled out my phone, and Sam Uley answered on the third ring.

"Dude," he said without a greeting, "I'm tapped out. I won't have any for three or four weeks."

"No, man, that's not why I'm calling. Is Emily or anyone else at Sue's?"

"Leah should be, why?"

"Seth's kinda freaking out, and Collin didn't really help much, so I figured it be easier to just take him home, but I wanted to make sure someone is there."

I heard him asking a question to someone, and a muffled feminine reply.

"Yeah, that's cool. Emily says Leah's there. Thanks, man, sorry about that. Collin can get aggressive sometimes."

"No problem. It was sort of on my way anyway," - I could reverse my usual delivery route and work my way back to town - "I won't get shot or anything, will I?"

Sam laughed. "Nah, just stay away from Old Quil and you'll be fine."

I hung up, and Seth eased into the seat, but didn't speak the whole way to his house.

Sam must have called ahead – Leah was waiting on the Clearwater's porch – and Seth got out of the car on his own, and went into the house.

"Thanks, Jasper," the copper-skinned girl said. "Collin can be a shit. Seth used to stand up to him, before."

"No problem. He's a good kid."

She nodded, and Seth waved from the window as I backed out of the driveway.

I drove on to Millie's, taking the long way, trying to find a place in my head that wasn't tense or stressed, Seven Nation's version of "Fascination Street" spiraling through my brain, and one of Bella's word-strings coiled with it, insinuating itself into the fiddle:

_I reel, feeling I no longer know what is real,  
I fear I have no words to define how I feel._

And that's how I felt; never able to find the words or the melody, only getting the feeling and intent of things, the harmony. Instead I covered every surface with quotes, other people's thoughts that could be broken down into syllables and phrases that made sense and had logic.

"Mr. Hale," Millie Verner said, taking the plate of cookies from my hands. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, but she'd gained weight from the last time I'd seen her, and her color was better. She was wearing a purple knit hat with a cool spiral pattern to it. "Can you stay for some tea?"

"Just tea," I said. She nodded to the kettle and unwrapped the cookies while I filled it.

She pulled out the old mint tin from last visit and took out the last charred stump of hand-rolled and put in the new, while I found mugs.

"It's no fun smoking alone," she grumbled. "It makes me feel old."

"Go ahead," I said, wondering how old she really was, "it'll make the cookies taste better."

"I'm sure they'll taste fine. Tell Esme thank you."

"Actually, Alice made them."

Millie quirked an eyebrow, dubious, "Is that a good thing?"

"Yeah," I laughed, "Carlisle can't boil water without a cookbook, so they all learned to cook when their mother-" I stopped laughing.

"Ah." Millie opened the tin and took out the half-smoked joint with a pair of tweezers, their little ends black with soot, obviously reserved for that purpose. She lit it, inhaling delicately, lips barely touching the paper and then held it out to me.

I shook my head, but she still held it out, and I gave in and took it, sucking the smoke down and holding it, passing it back, watching the orange cherry glow blaze as she hit it again, shaking my head "no," more emphatically when she tried to give it back, still holding in, my lungs aching with pressure, feeling the tension in my spine ease a little, and I exhaled, hard, grinning at her.

"That's better stuff than the new batch," I said. Mom grew medical grade from seeds she'd managed to get out of someone in California, and it was much smoother and stronger than what Sam's folks farmed.

Millie just looked at me out of the corner of her eye, saying nothing, and I squirmed in my seat.

The tea kettle whistled, a welcome distraction from her penetrating eyes, and I poured the water over the two teabags. I carried the mugs to the table and sat back down.

She picked up the sugar bowl and poured it directly into the teacup, and waited, saying nothing.

"Alice goes in on Thursday," I finally said, staring down at the amber liquid.

"Son of a bitch, that was fast! For a double mastectomy? Is she getting implants?"

I nodded. I didn't mention the nipple graft thing. Alice didn't want to talk about it, saying it was too weird, and I hated to admit that I didn't like thinking about it, her being _rearranged_ like that, even if it was only temporary.

"Well, the process isn't fun, but she'll like the results, I'd think."

"You've done it?" I asked, surprised. Her chest looked fine, turtleneck shirt bulging out in all the normal places, and I jerked my eyes up to her face, embarrassed that I was staring.

"Yep, left side, three years ago," she said, smiling. "I wish I'd had them both done. Now I'll have to wait a while and see if I can get through this latest mess."

I toyed with the tag on my teabag.

"How does it work, exactly?" I asked my mug, face flaming.

"It's pretty simple, actually," she answered, ignoring my discomfort. "They take everything out, and then put in an expander – it's kind of like an empty water balloon. When she's healed enough, they'll fill it with saline through a little port just under the skin, a little bit at a time, until she's the right size. Then they take out the expander and put the final implant in."

"Okay. That's what I thought, but Carlisle just talks doctor-speak and I wasn't sure. She's having a hysterectomy, too."

"Oh, poor you!"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you'll have to keep your hands off her for three months!"

I blinked, feeling stupid. No one had mentioned that. Something must have shown on my face, because Millie smirked, and then started to giggle, and I had to grin back. She looked ten years younger when she laughed.

"I'm surprised they're advising that at her age. She's what, seventeen?"

"Well, she and Carlisle had to go before a review board before they would schedule the surgery, but her family history is really bad, you know; her first cousin died of ovarian at age nineteen, so they need to do it now, I guess, because it's so hard to detect."

"How do _you_ feel about all this?"

"Helpless." I shrugged, but then the words wouldn't stop. "I feel guilty that she's going through all this, and I can't help or take on any of it for her. She's more scared about the hysterectomy than the boob thing; she keeps making jokes about getting neutered, and I can't even be properly sympathetic. It's not like I'm going to cut my balls off so I can tell her I understand what she's going through-"

"I doubt she'd want that, Jasper." Millie smiled and took a cookie from the plate, and nibbled on an edge. I sipped my tea, annoyed at my verbal vomit, as she grew pensive. "Though it might keep your voice from cracking all the time…"

I choked on the liquid, gasping through the tea that burned down my throat.

"Still not singing, then?"

I shook my head, still coughing.

"Bass is a good instrument," she said, as I caught my breath. "I saw Meshell Ndegeocello in concert in Paris, a long time ago."

"I bet that was phenomenal," I said, impressed.

"So was Paris. I always wanted to go back there. You'll have to send me a postcard, this summer."

I promised to, and we drank our tea, talking about the places she'd been, and the sights I wanted to see. I left, lighter for having someone to talk to, and promised to bring her the new album as soon as we finished it.

Mrs. Randal took her plate of cookies, but her hands were shaking badly, so I carried them to the kitchen and put them on the counter, shooing away three cats. The surface was covered in new jars of condiments and bottles of sauces, and I asked if she would like me to put them away for her.

"Actually, I need you to _open_ them," she said. I did so, making a show of a few of them, letting it look more difficult than it really was, though I did struggle with the jar of mayonnaise. I stowed them in her fridge, and the spices in her cabinet, as the cats wound around my ankles.

"I saw you at the hospital, the other day," I said. "Do you have a new relative?"

"No," she said, smiling. "That was a little left one. I like to go see the babies after my treatments. The ward nurses don't mind, and babies thrive better if they get cuddled, you know."

"What's a left one?"

"The ones left behind when the mother runs away."

"They're abandoned?!"

She nodded, and I felt naïve.

"It happens more than you think. Some silly young thing gets pregnant and sneaks out after the delivery, leaving the hospital to deal with the baby."

Something in her tone made me wonder if she had been one of those silly young things, many years ago.

I looked after the cats and scattered some rock salt on her sidewalk, and promised to give Mom her best, and then drove down a few blocks to Dora Gustavo's.

Mrs. G. met me at the door, taking the cookies, but handed me the little tin back.

"I don't need that. I still have plenty from last time."

She leaned over her walker and crooked her finger to bring me closer.

"I only use it the day after the therapy. It makes my house smell funny," she whispered. She called out to someone to come take the plate from her, and the sounds of women laughing filtered out from the back of the house, along with a cloud of powdery perfumes.

"Mahjong, today?" I asked, hoping I didn't "smell funny" at the moment.

"No, that's Saturday. We play Bunko on Sundays. You should tell Esme to come, the girls would love her."

I left her to her friends and drove home, head full of French landmarks, cats and jars, left babies and strange smells-  
_"Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings."  
_ -I thought to myself. Lewis Carroll seemed appropriate for this day, and I smiled, eager to see Alice.

**Alice:**  
I pushed open the door to the Stop and Go, breathing in the fumes of gasoline and fresh glazed donuts. Mondays were not my best days, especially when Dad made the coffee in the morning because it was honestly just undrinkable; the automatic drip did not a have a setting for "stronger than battery acid, but mellow in flavor," no matter how many scoops of mild roast he tried to ladle into the basket, but Edward said he needed to stop for gas on the way to pick up Bella, so I yawned my refusal of Dad's evil brew in favor of the filling station's cappuccino machine.

I walked through the aisles of junk food, single serving bags of pretzels and beef jerky and fudge snacky cakes, warring with my lust for chocolate and my fear of getting an ass as big as Jessica Stanley's. To be fair, hers was probably inherited, though her mother looked as if preference for Little Debbie 's might be a family trait. Of course, I was no judge of bad genes or interesting household habits; this past Saturday night, Esme taught us how to make a bong out of a peanut butter jar and a trumpet, much to my father's wry amusement. I bet Jessica's mother was making cookies and deciding on a lesson plan for Sunday school, though her perfect mom sensibilities would be slightly disturbed by the knowledge that her daughter advertised that she could fit a Pepsi can in her mouth. I wondered if that was also an inheri-

A familiar voice caught my attention, and I looked through a rack of potato chips to see Charlie talking to the heavyset cashierlady. His spine was straight as he leaned forward, fingertips tapping the counter, Chief Swan rather than my best friend's dad.

"No, sir," she answered. "Not too many people buy menthols these days, especially not that brand. I maybe order two cartons a month? Le'see. Granny Meyers, and your deputy, and the Cullen kid-"

"Edward?" asked Charlie in disbelief, and I was instantly wide awake. "Skinny kid with screwy red hair?"

"No, the other one. Big. Looks like he could eat bears for lunch."

"Emmett." The chief snorted.

"Yeah. He's legal, right? I mean, I carded him and all-"

"No, you're fine. Thank you for your time."

Charlie left, and I wrestled with the coffee dispenser, fuming at my oldest brother, and deciding _not _to buy Jasper his usual black-no-sugar. I paid and stepped outside as Edward was hanging up the pump and chatting with the chief.

"How tall _is_ your brother, anyway?" Bella's dad was asking.

"Six-foot-seven, barefoot," my brother answered, grinning.

"Jesus, does he have to have his shoes specially made, like Shaq?"

"No," I said, behind them, forcing my clenched jaw to move. "He's only a size fourteen. I order them off the internet."

"Hey, Alice." Charlie seemed distracted, and his brows were shoved together, like this Monday was proving to be a disappointment at only eight in the morning. I sympathized.

"Hey."

I turned my back on the both of them, still seething, and got into the car. Jasper reached for me, but I scooted up to the window and strapped my seatbelt on and snapped off the plastic toggle on the coffee cup's sippy hole, and stared out the window. Edward said goodbye to Charlie and we took off toward Bella's house, and I watched the scenery go by, ignoring my boyfriend's touch on the back of my hand. After he'd said my name twice, I fished my ear buds out of my purse and flicked through my iPhone playlists and settled on "Bone China" by Mother Love Bone, sulky grunge and my mood exactly; when it ended I hit repeat, and Jazz snagged a bud out of my ear and stuck it in his, which was gross, but I was too furious to say anything to him. Bella texted me from the front seat - **whatz wrong?! **– but I ignored her, too.

When we got to school, she let me out and I was at Emmett's Jeep and opening the door before Jasper was out of the Volvo, and I interrupted Em's and Rosalie's macking session, grabbing him by his ear and pulling him out and over to Jasper. When he batted at me, I pulled down harder, until his body was almost at right angles to his legs.

"What the fuck, midget?" he yelled when I let him go.

I reached into the inside pocket of Jasper's navy pea coat and pulled out the pack of cigarettes that I knew would be there, and smashed them into Emmett's chest, mashing with my palm to break them.

"You buy them for him!" I yelled up into his shocked face.

"Uh," he eloquently articulated, and I spun around and jabbed my finger at Jasper, on that tender spot between his collarbones, making him flinch. He grabbed my wrist, hard, but let it go immediately.

"_You. Listen. To. Me_," I yelled, seeing every red shade from fire engine to screaming bitch, but as the eyes of the entire student body swiveled to us, I dropped my voice to a hiss. "I am _not_ getting my boobs lopped off and my parts cut out just for YOU to get fucking lung cancer! If I have to do all this, you can fucking give up the cigarettes!"

He stared at me, and I thought that if he cracked a joke or teased me I would completely lose all dignity in the middle of the school parking lot, but he just looked at me, jaw hard, and reached into his pants pocket. He held out his fist, and I raised a reluctant hand.

"Done," he said, voice low and quiet, dropping his lighter into my open palm. He nodded once without smiling, holding my eyes with his, and turned and walked alone toward the building, the first time he'd ever gone in not holding my hand.

* * *

What is your favorite scar?


	10. Drifting

Our scars have good stories; the best are the ones that gave birth to little ones. I like the one on my nose, where I broke it in college.

I'll get music lists up on my bio soon. Promise. Can anyone recommend a better platform than Imeem?

ElleCC betas this mess, and I don't own what other people do, but the rest is mine.

**

* * *

Alice:  
**I was awake, or at least I thought I was. One of the few T-shirts I'd made for Jasper had several layers cut away to reveal the quote "I think therefore I am," and on the back it said "I think I am, I think I am, I think I am," so by Descartes' reasoning, if I was acknowledging that I was awake, I must be. Rene Descartes was long dead, though, and no longer thinking, which made me feel even better because if I was thinking, then I was alive, even though my eyes were closed.

"Her vitals look good." My father's voice eased into the numbness of my brain, warming me with their satisfaction.

"It went really well. We were able to fill the implants halfway," said a voice I'd heard before.

"That will take a lot of time out of the expansion process."

"It'll give her some shape, too, make her feel better about how she looks from the start," said the other doctor.

I still wasn't ready to open my eyes.

"There's a reason I brought her to the best surgeon on the West Coast."

"Second best. The best is wasting his talent in some backwoods town called Spoons or something. Man, I heard you turned down an offer from Johns Hopkins!"

"To do what, poke my finger at a computer screen to make a laser move three rooms away?" My father laughed softly. "Garrett, so far this month I've extracted a fishhook from a twelve-year-old kid's cornea, performed a field autopsy on the body of a wanted narcotics dealer, and pulled a chainsaw blade out of a logger's femur. When was the last time you delivered triplets by emergency C-section?"

"Last week, actually."

"During a power outage?"

"Okay, you win," the other man laughed and muttered, "Adrenaline junkie."

I tried to picture my dad as a thrill seeker in rock climbing gear and a lab coat, or in a parachute with his stethoscope around his neck, but my foggy mind couldn't wrap around the concept properly.

"She's smiling." I could hear by his voice that Dad was, too.

"She looks like Elizabeth." I wondered how the man knew my mother.

"Wait 'til her eyes are open."

He shouldn't wait, I thought. I didn't feel like opening them yet. I floated, immobile, drifting into strange satin-lined places in my brain, body heavy and limbs leaden, uncomfortable with pressure in my back and lower belly.

I heard voices I didn't know, one pleasantly matronly, asking someone else how I was, and if I'd managed to pass the gas from the anesthesia. I contemplated the concept and gave an experimental push, hoping to please, and was impressed at the tremendous noise I produced. My father's surprised bark of laughter made me happy.

"Oh, well done!" applauded the nurse, and I nodded, eyes still closed, the pain in my back lessened, and I slid back into liquid clouds and sleep.

I heard voices I did know, and quiet notes of a Spanish guitar, lovely and soft, and laughter. I smelled the faint scent of the strawberry shampoo my best friend used on her long hair.

"Gin," whispered my stepmother with satisfaction.

"Crap," murmured my eldest brother.

"Shh! I think she's awake," said my twin.

I wiggled my fingers in a wave. I heard the tap of boot heels on tile and felt warmth near my face, and smelled salty caramel breath whispering my name.

"Are you awake, darl?" Jasper's voice was a tired rasp.

I shook my head "no" and floated on his chuckle, sliding between the guitar chords, feeling out of place but somehow secure, surrounded by his warmth. I wanted to reach for him, to tell him it was okay to touch me, and sorry for pushing him away these past few days, I was just scared, and I was still afraid, and I needed him so badly, and I was glad he was here, but I wasn't ready to open my eyes, but I could feel him, warm, and I slept.

Garrett was my father's roommate in college, I remembered, and he smelled of expensive aftershave and anti-bacterial soap and coffee. I'd have liked a cup of coffee, but that meant I'd have to wake up to drink it, and somehow that thought felt like a Möbius strip looping in my head.

"Carlisle." The doctor's voice was deep and musical. He should sing, I thought. He'd make a good lounge ballad singer, easy voice with a sense of humor.

I heard my father's light snore stop short, and the shuffle of feet and a metal creak of a chair.

"The labs?" he asked.

"Clear."

"All of them?" his voice broke to a whisper.

"Yes," the other said softly. "Shall I tell them?"

My dad didn't answer, but Garrett left the room.

I heard nothing but my father's stuttered breathing, wet gasps that I hadn't heard for five years.

"We got it, Liz," he whispered. "It won't get her, too."

I felt her then, called by his voice, and the way she smelled, even in beds like this, of sunshine and oil paints and nutmeg, and I felt her embrace and his relief, and it carried me into the clouds.

Later, Edward's excited voice flickered through my nimbus dream. "Rose, go back, repeat that."

Guitar notes lilted, drawing pretty notes behind my eyelids.

"Now take it up to a G and then drop it to C-minor."

"That's nice," Jazz said. "Kind of wistful, but upbeat."

He sounded exhausted, and I wanted to wake up, to go to him and stroke his hair and take him to bed, but I wasn't ready to open my eyes and have them worry, and ask me if I was okay, and make me the point of focus, when it was so lovely to just lie there and listen to them, here with me-

"Can you add another beat to the first note?" Bella asked. "I need to get another syllable to fit in there, but I like how that lines up with the phrase at the end."

Rose played again.

"That fits really well!" Edward sounded excited. "Jazz, can you work with this? What do you think? Low fifths underneath?"

"Lemme mull it over, Bro. Not sure I can concentrate now, know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I do. No sweat, man, we got time."

I'm fine, lover, I wanted to tell him, I'm just not ready to open my eyes. I don't want to see yet. I don't want to look.

There was something I needed to do, to wake up and resolve the strange pressure in odd places I couldn't quite feel, but nothing made sense so I let go of my consciousness, drifting again.

"How many bags has she had since she came out of post-op?" asked a voice.

"Why? What does the chart say?" asked the other.

"Look at this. She's had that much fluid, but her cath bag is practically empty."

"Well, all her stats are fine. Wouldn't hurt to mention it to the attending, though."

My family came back briefly and left again, with finality, and they squeezed my feet through the blanket as they walked out, like I was a blarney stone or a Buddha one touched for luck, and I liked that.

Quiet filled the room, taking up a larger space than my favorite voices, and I slept on.

**Jasper:**  
The nurse called five more minutes of visiting hours, like a bartender announcing last call, and we all filed out of the room in pairs, except for me. I walked out last, alone. Mom and Carlisle talked with the nurses at the station, and Emmett and Rosalie walked down the hall holding hands, the guitar case slung over her back.

Edward and Bella and I stood around at the row of chairs, shuffling our feet. She handed me a piece of paper, a makeshift card with the words to the song we were working on earlier while Alice slept.

"Give this to her when she wakes up, okay?" She hugged me, and walked down the corridor, following Em and Rose.

Edward looked at me, and then away, and rubbed the back of his neck, his mouth moving like he was trying to say something but couldn't find the words.

"I'll bring her home," I promised through the twist in my throat, and he nodded without speaking. He bumped my shoulder with his, and slapped my back - the closest we got to affection - and walked down the hall after Bella and my mother. I followed them partway down the hall, looking for a restroom.

After washing my hands, I splashed my face and raked my fingers through my hair. I looked fairly awful, like I hadn't slept in days, which made sense, because I hadn't, much. I felt strange here, no understanding of this place that I could anchor a sense of self to.

"_We must be our own before we can be another's_," Waldo said, but right now I really was defined by someone else, and the waiting for her to wake. I wanted a cigarette, that singular satisfaction of taking a selfish moment, the simple calm that came with the easing as important as the nicotine buzz. I'd gone three days without, and that on top of my worry about today had set me at odds, unable to be what Alice needed, letting her shove me away in her fear, and keeping the distance out of my own.

Fidgeting with the change in my pocket, I left the bathroom, looking for signs that might lead me to a cup of coffee. I wandered through the halls, my shoulders at my ears, turning away from the miserable eyes of others, their stress crawling under my skin. I turned corners instinctively, moving toward brighter lights and happier noises, figuring that would be where I might find a coffee shop, but instead found myself in the neo-natal center.

I stood in the waiting room and looked around, having no idea where to go, but was drawn to the corridor that was lined with glass on both sides. Rows of tiny cribs with little sleeping bundles of pastel cloth filled the rooms. In a partially curtained off area a, tired looking woman nursed a baby, a blanket over her chest for modesty. I looked away quickly.

"One of them yours?" a light voice with a brogue asked.

I turned, startled, and shook my head at the young nurse. She had caramel skin and black pouffy hair, and a full lip-glossy smile.

"I'm only seventeen!" My voice cracked to prove it, and her shrug made me feel even younger.

I looked away, embarrassed. She stood with me, and I felt her eyes on my face, and her curiosity.

"You have been in here, then?" she asked. "I've seen you before."

"My girlfriend is in the women's care unit. She just had surgery," I said.

She nodded.

"I was looking for some coffee," I added.

"There's a kiosk down the hall and two lefts past the double doors," she said. I tried to place where she was from, intrigued; her vowels were shaped differently than Siobhan's.

I nodded, but didn't move, my eyes flicking over the little faces, looking to see which might not be "thriving."

"Are any of them-" I stopped, flustered.

She raised a dark eyebrow.

"Are any of them orphans?"

She nodded, pointing to a crib, where a little pink face was moving under a blue hat, his lips moving slightly. He seemed healthy.

"Would you like to feed him?" she asked.

I stared at her, confused, and glanced at the nursing mothers behind the gauzy privacy curtain, and back at her.

Her laughter rang out, an earthy peal that bounced down the hallway.

"With a bottle, boy!" Her accent swallowed the "t's."

"No, thanks, I'm, I just wanted, um, coffee-" The heat flooded my face as she doubled over, hands at her stomach, laughing harder, pointing-

"Your face!" she giggled.

I fled down the hall, not finding the coffee stand, but inexplicably winding up in the women's care unit. I gave up on caffeine, and walked back to Alice's room. A nurse stopped me just outside her door.

"Visiting hours are over, young man. Only immediate family in patient rooms," she said, voice and chin firm.

I nodded, catching a glimpse of Carlisle through the blinds, and sat down in the chair outside. The nurse glared at me and took a deep breath to say more, but then the phone at her desk rang, and her conversation outlasted her suspicion. I stuck in my earbuds, but played no music, just Tetris on my phone, easy mode to pass the time, square after square falling down in their neat row, monotonous and soothing. The tops of the blocks made jagged patterns like sound wave files when I enlarged the data to cut off a note precisely where-

"What are you still doing here?" Carlisle stood over me, his brows snapped tight together. "Why didn't you leave with Esme?"

"Could you leave, if you were me?" I asked, too tired to even be pissed off that he thought I would go home.

His eyes narrowed with a cold flash, Edward's face when I pushed the right button, and I steeled myself for his ire, but didn't back down from his glare.

"Do you know him, sir?" the nurse called from her desk.

He stared at me, looking as exhausted as I felt, and I looked straight back, ready to accept any chastising, but immobile as stone. Something in his face twisted, then cleared.

"He's my son," he said, as if trying the words on for size, and a corner of his mouth twitched upward.

I stared at him in surprise, and tried to keep my face still, amused and annoyed. The acknowledgement meant I could see her, but I would have to act _brotherly_. Bastard thought it was funny.

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?" the nurse fussed. "You can go in, then. Just keep it quiet."

"I'm going to go find a sandwich or something," Carlisle said. "Do you want anything?"

I shook my head. "Coffee, maybe," I muttered.

"You need food." He frowned at me and left.

I went in, the first time I'd been alone with her since she went in this morning, and stood against the wall, shaking off the shock of seeing her so pale, and the foreign invasion of the tube under her nose and in her arm, her stillness making her seem tiny in the bed. I hated the white and chrome and glass of the room. Alice should always be surrounded by colors, earth-toned rainbow silks and warm jewels that matched her eyes, not this sterile cold of bleached sheets and polished metal.

I watched the sheet over her chest rise and fall, minute movements that eased the panic in my belly, the steady blip of the machines a reassuring contradiction to the vicious blues of "St. James Infirmary" that coiled through my brain, and I fought it, not wanting to think of the words, forcing myself to think not of the tiny girl in the bed – _stretched out on a cold white table, so sweet, so cold, so fair_ – but to see her playing the song, fists clutched around a harmonica with her cheeks red and puffed, hips swinging with the dirty wail grind from the harp at her lips, the Collard Greens and Gravy version that put anyone but Satchmo to shame.

Feeling selfish, but unable to stop, I moved to the bed and touched the hand that had escaped the blankets, just to reassure myself that she was real. She curled her cool fingers around mine, and her mouth moved with my name. Her eyes never opened, but my heart started beating again for the first time since she'd gone in.

She looked better than earlier, her sleeping face now more animated with dreams than with the drugs.

"I love you," I whispered, and her hand tightened, and then slowly relaxed as she fell back into a deeper sleep. I stood there, watching her breathe, for what seemed like an eternity.

A new tune slid into my head, lighter, a counterpoint to the melody Rosalie and Edward were playing with, and I tweaked the pen from the clipboard at the end of Alice's bed and scribbled down the notes on the cuff of my shirt before I forgot them.

"How is she doing?" Carlisle walked in, two long sandwiches in plastic bags and a cardboard tray with paper cups and lids.

"Better, I think," I said, taking the food reluctantly. "She knows I'm here. That number has gone up."

He looked at the little monitor and the green digits, but didn't seem concerned.

"Is that blood pressure?"

He nodded.

"She may need an increase in morphine as the longer term nerve blocks wear off," he said around a mouthful of food.

"Is she going to be in a lot of pain?" I asked, as the number rose again. I took a bite of the sandwich to be polite, and then was suddenly ravenous, tearing into it like I hadn't eaten in days.

"Quite a bit, I'd imagine, but everyone is different." He sucked on his straw. "What?"

"I don't think I've ever seen you drink a Coke before."

"Much better with rum in it," he said, grimacing at his cup.

I reached under my chair and pulled out my backpack, and dug in the inner pocket. The silver half pint flask with my initials engraved on the front sloshed merrily.

"Bookers?" I asked him.

He rolled his eyes at me, but unscrewed the lid and sniffed, and his posture and expression were so much like Edward's that I had to stifle my smile. Carlisle took a swig, and passed it to me, and when I passed it back, he took another and put the lid back on with deliberate movements, cutting me off.

"That's good stuff," he said.

Alice moved in the bed, bringing her hands down over her lower body and the steady tempo of the beeping machine increased minutely.

We watched her for a few moments, in silence.

"I gave you this," Carlisle said, turning the flask over in his hands. "Birthday before last."

"Yep. Isn't sixteen a little young to be encouraging alcoholism?" I'd always wanted to ask him that, but never had the nerve.

"Probably," he smiled, looking at metal bottle, "But my father gave me one at sixteen, and Granddad gave him one, and his father and so on. Shouldn't break tradition."

He handed it back to me, and I stuck it in my bag, not looking at him, feeling strange and embarrassed and kind of good, like I was part of something bigger than just me, a tradition that I could pass on, too.

"Mommy, I have to go!" my girlfriend's whimper cut through our moment, and the color drained from my stepfather's face as she called for her dead mother. The numbers on the machine were rising steadily, and a nurse walked in and grabbed her chart off the end of the bed.

Alice's face was screwed up in distress, and it reminded me of something that I thought I should recognize. She mumbled something, and I moved forward to hear.

"Young man," said the nurse, her voice sharp, "you should wait outside."

"Just cut them, Emmett, cut the laces," Alice wailed, eyes squeezed shut.

"She's hallucinating," growled Carlisle, knuckles white on the bed frame. "She needs-"

"Wait," I said, "I think-"

"Young man," the nurse repeated.

"Jasper, get out," Carlisle barked at me, eyes blazing.

"She needs to pee!" I said, voice even and low, cutting through his stress.

His eyes widened, and he looked at his daughter on the bed, her legs pressed tightly together, and nodded.

"She's got a catheter," said the nurse.

"The packing," Carlisle said. "The packing is putting pressure on the-"

"Oh, of course," the nurse agreed, already moving to the door. "Poor kid! Let me ask the attending if it can come out!"

"How did you know?" Carlisle asked.

"She got stuck in some shorts on her birthday; Emmett had to cut her out of them so she could use the bathroom."

The look on his face was hysterical, and I swallowed my laughter, feeling guilty for wanting to giggle when Alice was so uncomfortable. The nurse and another woman came through the door.

"We're going to get that out, and I'll give the post op exam on the sutures while I'm at it, and she'll probably want to wash up, so-" They all looked at me.

"Oh." I felt stupid. "I'll go take a walk."

I wandered off, moving through hallways and doors I had seen before, feeling like I was sleepwalking. I wondered why Alice wasn't waking up. There were times that she had responded to my voice, smiling, and I knew she was listening to us as we worked through the new song. I wanted to see her eyes.

"You're back!" the cute nurse exclaimed. Scotts, I decided, placing her swallowed consonants.

I nodded.

"Wait here!" She walked away, calling to another nurse.

I looked in at the rows of babies. There was a new one, with tubes and tape on her face. She was waving her fist randomly in the air.

"Is this you?" The nurse was holding a magazine, opened to a familiar black and white page.

I nodded again.

"You're Jasper. The bassist. Of Breaking Dawn?"

My head felt attached to my head strangely, like one of those bobbling dashboard dolls, but I was pleased to have this sense of self, and the name that went with it.

"And your girlfriend is here? Her?" She pointed again, and I felt warning bells gonging through my brain, suddenly understanding Alice's worries about our private lives being invaded. I tried to find something polite and noncommittal to say, but I'd already told her too much. "I can't wait to tell the dayshift girls!"

"You said I could feed the baby?" I blurted out, trying to distract her. "You know, with a bottle?"

She laughed again, and led me to a room where I was told to wash up to my elbows and put on a smock thing to cover my shirt so I wouldn't get baby barf on it. She sat me in a rocking chair outside of the privacy curtain and laid the little guy on my arm with his head sort of nudged in my elbow where it couldn't roll about, and showed me the right tilt to the bottle. I was surprised at how strong his tiny mouth was, and how firmly he latched on to the rubber nipple.

"That's it?" I asked the nurse. "How do I know when he's done?"

She nodded. "He'll stop pulling or he'll finish the bottle. If he gets wiggly, rub his back a bit."

She walked away, and I wanted to tell her not to leave, slightly terrified of this fragile thing who weighed less than one of Mrs. Randal's cats. After several minutes, he stopped sucking, and I took the bottle from his lips, and he burped, a bubble of milk smell and spit, and then started working his tongue again. I stuck the bottle back in his mouth.

"See, you're a natural." The voice came from behind me, and I relaxed, pleased that I'd gotten it right and that she was still there to make sure I did. I wondered what his name was, but I didn't want to ask in case it was something weird and wrong, like Albert.

The bottle was mostly empty when he stopped pulling at it, but the nurse wasn't in sight, so I tucked it next to me in the chair and just sat there. I squirmed once in the chair, and he opened his grey eyes, vaguely startled, and then clamped them shut again.

I closed mine, too, rocking a bit, the little warm weight vital and precious and interesting. The room wasn't exactly noisy, but the rustling of breathing and flannel movements and minute whirring of monitors filled the room. A bass rhythm slid into my brain, mirroring the quick steady baseline heartbeat that echoed around me, a bit like the intro to Feist's "I Feel It All": funky undercurrent to a wistful tune with pretty words.

_Someday she's gonna be a star,  
And drive a yellow porsche  
The color of the moon,  
And when she wakes up,  
she'll dance in lights,  
Brighter than the sun at noon.  
She'll laugh in the arms,  
Of a boy with sky in his eyes,  
And-_

And I'm dancing with her, she's wearing slow spinning skirts with ties down the back, a silk hospital gown, ill fitting and sliding off her shoulder, lovely because she is in it, smiling up at me. She pulls the cowboy hat off my head, and reaches in and pulls a white rabbit out by the ears, and I laugh and let him nest down inside because he's really a newborn baby in a blue hat with pink skin and grey eyes, and a tiny silver star pinned to his chest. I pull a bottle out of the holster at my hip, and she looks at me, sorrow dulling her hazel eyes and she's shaking my shoulder and I whisper-

"Jasper, your coat's buzzing." The nurse laid the pea coat over the arm of the rocker and took the infant from me.

"How long was I asleep?" I fumbled in the pocket for my phone.

"Not long. Maybe twenty minutes." She smiled and laid the baby back in the plastic crib.

"It's Alice," I breathed.

**Hi! I love you. I was afraid 2 wake up and see but I look much better than I thought I would. Dad sez you r here and went 4 a walk and are clever and hes glad you stayed. I need a cup of coff**

I laughed, wondering how much more she had typed, and what other thoughts got truncated by the character limit.

"She's awake!" I told the nurse.

"Well, go on, then!" she said.

I tore the smock off and grabbed my coat, kissed her on the cheek and ran down the hall. I cleared every turn, knowing the way to her room like it was my own way home.

Alice was sitting up, and her eyes were open, sleepy and perfect, vibrant gold-green, and my heart pounded in my chest as she smiled at me.

I stood in front of her, trying to breathe, the strangeness of the day crashing down on me, wondering if I were still dreaming.

"Hello," she said, reaching for me, and I stumbled forward, needing no other identity but being hers.

* * *

Did you make a New Year's Resolution? Have you kept it so far?


	11. Somnambulant Heat

We made very few resolutions this year. I haven't smoked a cigarette for what feels like an _extremely_ long time.

Please check out mskathy's bio for info on her amazing Haiti relief effort. I'm writing a bit for the compilation.

Stephenie owns what is hers, I own the rest, and EllCC beta's this, even though Alice is in it.

* * *

February

**Jasper:  
**"Dude, you look like shit!" Edward actually seemed concerned. He didn't look so hot either, but we had work to do, and how I looked had nothing to do with us blowing the song on every damned take.

"Fuck you very much," I said pleasantly, tapping the lower levels just a hair, trying to avoid the odd resonance from the lower piano range. "Now try it again, and don't go flat in the chorus when you start the bridge."

He gave me a pissy look, but sat down and ran his fingers over the keys. Emmett sighed. I probably should have recorded separately, voice _over_ keyboard, but Edward sang better live than on top of prerecorded tracks, and the words were important on this one.

We took it again and didn't even make it to the second chorus; this time Emmett fell apart, practically tangling up into three quarter time. I'd never known him to break like that, ever. He looked away from me when I glared at him, like he was hiding something.

Rose watched me, eyes expectant, almost accusatory, and I ground my teeth, wishing someone else would take charge for just once, and lead _me_ around by the nose. I stepped into the booth, reset to record, and turned to find her blocking the door.

"We need to stop," my sister said.

"Bella can sing the duet this weekend, and I can lay it in over what we do tonight. That's not the problem. Ed's unfocused, and I don't know what Em's deal is. Did he do that on purpose?"

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"We've got to move forward on this, Rose!"

I didn't want to lose momentum; the magazine article had generated a huge amount of buzz. Ben told me that we'd had four thousand hits to the site's "under construction" page within two days, and the EP was selling like crazy on iTunes.

She said nothing, just looked at me, waiting, rubbing her thumb over her fingertips, a string player's unconscious habit of testing calluses. She seemed almost anxious.

"It can wait." Her eyes held mine and then deliberately moved to the booth window, to Edward. He was sitting on the piano bench, shoulders slumped, exhausted and tense, flipping his iPhone over and over in one hand, staring vaguely into space.

I looked back to Rosalie, her blue eyes the mirror of my own. I was barefoot, and her shoes put us nose to nose. People often asked us if we were twins, because we looked so alike, but we had none of the connection or innate simpatico that Alice and Edward had, though they looked so different.

"He needs sleep, Jazz," said Emmett, sliding behind her, and wrapping his arms around her waist. She leaned back against him. Jealousy gnawed at me, at their ability to touch, to have physical comfort. His eyes grew dark with pity when he saw it. "So do you."

"I can't," I muttered, frustrated.

I'd slept in the same bed with her for over a year.

We'd both listened to the half-hearted parental lectures about co-dependency and self-identity, given out of a sense of duty and with acknowledged hypocrisy; Carlisle worked his extra shifts when Mom was at design expos, and she stayed up late when he worked nights, and every morning when Alice and I woke, curled together tighter than a Celtic knot, no one said a word.

For the past week, she'd slept on the living room couch, keeping odd hours to the tune of her pain medication, bandage changes and the draining of something Carlisle called JP's, but that she wouldn't let me see. We all took turns on the other sofa at night, to be on hand if she needed anything, but I couldn't sleep there either.

Rose reached around me and flipped off the master switch to the soundboard. I nodded in defeat, and shut down the computer. I followed them out, but stopped in the studio doorway as they filed up the narrow stairway.

Edward was oblivious to them leaving, and his loneliness wrapped him like a shroud. I stared at him, thinking. Henry David Thoreau said, _"The most I can do for my friend is to simply be his friend,"_ and I racked my exhausted brain for the right thing to say.

"Hey, so would you rather fuck a goat or fuck a pig?"

He blinked and looked at me in horror.

"Um." He wrinkled his forehead in disgust, and a bubble of hysteria swelled in my chest. "I guess a goat? Why?"

"Dude! It's a rhetorical question! You _actually_ thought about it?!"

"Fuck you." He was trying not to laugh, but I couldn't hold it back, and he flipped me off.

"Baaa!" I said, shaking my head in emphatic mock terror, and tore up the stairs, covering my ass with my hands, laughing the whole way.

"Asshole!" he called up after me.

"I said NO!" I yelled back, hitting the light switch and slamming the door. He shoved at the door and I blocked him, and then stepped away quickly. He fell through, landing on hands and knees as the door banged open. He was red-faced, but he was laughing, and I reached a hand out to help him up. He took it, and jerked my wrist, pulling me off balance so I landed on the floor, too.

"Boys!" Mom hissed, "Keep it down!"

We both instantly sobered, looking to the living room in guilt, and each stood up on our own.

"Is she asleep?" I asked.

"Probably not anymore!" She handed me a pill and a glass of water with a bendy straw. "See if she's up and needs this yet. She's gone a lot longer without, today."

I stared at the little white pill, resenting its existence. The pain killers, though necessary, dulled Alice, stripped her of the vitality that defined her as much as her physical appearance, her laughing voice, her sense of humor.

She was awake, lips pressed tight as she focused on the television, watching some fashion reality show with the volume low.

"Hey," I said, handing her the glass. "How are you doing?"

She made a face and shrugged her shoulders, and then winced at the movement. I pinched the pill with both hands, snapping it in half so that it would work faster, and helped her to sit upright.

"Better, I think," she said, "Either that or I'm getting used to it. Help me stand up?"

Sitting and standing up were the hardest for her, the muscles in her abdomen pulling at fresh scar tissue above and below. She could do it on her own, and often did, earlier in the day when she wasn't so weary. I held her elbows and supported her as she stood, and hovered outside the bathroom door in case she needed help, despite her protest that she was fine. She shuffled back to the sofa, taking small steps and sat down, obviously tired by the effort.

"How was practice?" she asked.

"Good," I said, brightly, and looked away as my voice cracked on the lie.

Alice nodded, not meeting my eyes either. She poked in the cushions, and pulled out her iPhone, squeezing the buds into her ears, music helping to take her mind off the pain as the opiates kicked in.

"What are you listening to?" I asked, sitting down on the floor, my elbow on the couch, supporting my head to be close without a danger of jostling her.

"Clapton," she said. She pulled out a micro speaker out of her ear and rubbed the foam on the blanket, and handed it to me. "'Heads in Georgia,' with J.J. Cale. It'd be good for you all to do."

I frowned at her, disliking that she'd excluded herself. The song _was_ good, lilting blues, smooth as old whiskey, and she closed her eyes, dark sable lashes a smudge on her cheek. I reached out to brush the lock of hair that clung to the side of her face, smoothing it back, just wanting an excuse to touch her skin. She moved to my touch, mouth breathing a kiss into my palm.

It burned like fire through my entire body, and I swallowed, startled at my instant reaction to the simple intimacy. I pulled away, still feeling the heat of her lips in my hand, excruciatingly aware of her mouth, the softness of her skin, embarrassed by the sudden pressure in my jeans as my erection strained against the denim fly. She was recovering from invasive surgery and in huge amounts of pain, barely held in check by narcotics, and I was responding to her touch like an uncaring, horny brute.

"Don't go," she whispered, and her words seared through my brain, the same sleepy words she murmured in the mornings when I would slide out from under her body, and most times I would stay, waking her with my hands and mouth on warm skin-

I turned around, back against the front of the couch, drawing my knees up, trying to calm down, annoyed with myself and my rampant anatomy.

She reached out, fingertips at the nape of my neck, toying with my hair, the way she did when I was agitated. I closed my eyes and leaned into her tantalizing touch, aching all over, listening to her song with her until her fingers relaxed and her tight breathing eased into painless sleep.

**Alice:  
**My hair was on fire.

I opened my eyes, smelling no smoke, seeing no orange flames, just the dark living room and the faint fruity scent of one of Esme's fancy decorative candles. I squirmed, body cradled in the couch cushions so that I couldn't roll over in my sleep accidentally, and reached for my head, moving at my neck and my elbows, careful not to flex my shoulders. My hair was soaking wet, and my scalp burned, and I wondered if someone had poured boiling water on my head, and then I wondered if I was dreaming, because that was bizarre, and my pillow didn't seem to be wet.

I folded the blanket back, moving slowly, pulling the fabric down with my finger tips, but the night air didn't help. My face felt like it was baking from the inside out, like the embarrassed zebra joke: what's black and white and red all over.

I tried to remember the side effects to the medications I was taking. The antibiotics made my stomach hurt, but that was okay because I'd mostly given up on food because the pain killers made me viciously constipated. The estrogen patch might give me vaso-motor-rhi-something, which was a fancy name for a runny nose, but that hadn't happened yet, and the spirono stuff did something to my blood pressure. The goopy stuff up my girl parts just made me goopy.

The heat was getting worse, creeping down my head and neck, across my chest, and seeming to stop at my waist, a strange prickly crawling of skin that made me want to gasp. Was I having a reaction to the expanders? The doctors said it was really rare for anyone to reject their implants, but it _could_ happen.

No one was sleeping on the couch by the piano – what I was beginning to call the babysitting station – but dad's shoes were on the floor nearby; I was glad it was his turn to watch me. Feeling ridiculous for the fear that was screaming through the imaginary flames in my hair, I reached for the phone in my hoodie pocket.

He picked up on the first ring, and walked into the living room from the kitchen, whispering with the phone at his ear.

"What do you need, honey?"

"I think I'm allergic to something," I said, trying not to cry.

He shoved his phone in his pocket and turned the light on. I blinked at him, thinking that he needed a haircut, he was getting as shaggy as Edward and I.

"You're quite red," said Dad.

"I feel like I'm sun burnt. Or still burning, or something."

"Let's get you sitting up." His manner changed to his formal calm doctor voice that both soothed and scared me, and braced my back to help me maneuver upright. I could do it myself now – the drains had been out for a week and most of the bandages were gone; nothing pulled when I moved – but my muscles were still tender and it was nice to have the help. He knelt and pressed my cheek lightly, and held fingertips to my wrist for a moment, and then as I began to shiver from the cool air on my sweaty skin, he sighed, and smiled at me.

"All gone?"

I nodded, cold and confused, feeling like I had stepped from the movie where the girl could set people on fire with her mind to one where the ice queen-vampire-succubus woman kisses the hot guy and sucks all the warmth out of him, except I was the guy.

"You're having night sweats, Alice," Dad explained, sitting back on his heels. "Hot flashes. It's perfectly normal; you may get a few more as your body adjusts to the replacement hormones in the patch."

"It didn't feel normal at all."

He looked at his phone briefly.

"It's a little early, but do you need a pill? Or ice?"

"I'm a little sore, but not much. Can't I just take aspirin or something? I'd like to eat someday soon."

"Hungry?" He asked.

I nodded, wanting to pout and feel sorry for myself, because I was sick of toast and prunes, but everybody was being sweet and nice and always there, though it made me feel kind of weird that I only had to tell Rose to take an umbrella once, and Esme looked fine without me, and Bella made my cookie recipe and they were good. Jasper took showers without being told he stank, and Edward did his laundry. _Emmett_ went grocery shopping, and they still had practice and were remastering tracks without me.

At least Dad's coffee was still awful. I would catch him looking into his mug after a sip, with a perplexed expression, as if seeing a relative he no longer recognized.

I nibbled at the dried fruit non-goodness, and contemplated hot flashes. Knowing now what it was, it was kind of interesting, kind of like an orgasm flush without the good part, that lovely I-feel-every-nerve-in-my-body-going-in-all-directions-at-once sensation. Jasper told me that once in his karate class he got kicked in the balls so hard he had to go jerk off to make sure everything still worked properly, and he spurted and everything, but it didn't feel good. I hoped mine still worked properly, but I really wasn't ready to stick my fingers down there and find out yet. I wasn't in a big rush to get reacquainted with anything about myself at the moment; I barely looked when dad took the stitches out yesterday. I was not ready to see the rearranged me.

I had some shape; even a little cleavage. I still looked like a girl, with some teen-aged curves, and more than Angela Weber had, despite the ugly little compression bra with the zipper down the front that was about as un-lingerie-like as Mrs. Cope's polka-dot granny panties that I'd seen her buying in Port Angeles, though I pretended not to notice.

"Hey," Jasper murmured, leaning over the back of the couch and dropping a paper crane into my lap. He looked so exhausted, I wanted to cry.

"You're up early," I said, reaching up, doing one of the finger walking exercises on the back of the couch until I could touch his hand. He trapped my fingers in his.

"I was remixing 'Flying High' with one of Bella's things as the refrain." I nodded, hearing what he didn't say; the purple circles under his eyes shouted of yet another night with no sleep.

Dad had offered to give him something that would knock him out, but he'd refused, disliking how prescription sleep aids made him feel the next day, and Esme's valerian tea smelled like nasty socks and tasted worse. The few times he'd smoked up enough to pass out, he'd felt like hell in the morning, and that wasn't really good sleep, anyway. I felt rotten about it.

"Come sit with me," I invited, as I had for the past two weeks.

"I don't want to bump you," he declined, as he had for the past two weeks.

I nodded, and toyed with the remote, examining the buttons carefully, still not accustomed to him not wanting to touch me. I sat up, knees to my chest, clearing three couch cushions worth of space, and balanced the little white crane on my left knee cap.

I could feel his eyes on me, but I queued up my favorite show, letting the invitation lie open. I watched a flagrant designer make fabric choices while complaining about a budget, and after a few moments, Jasper sat on the other end of the couch.

"You look better," he said after a moment, and I nodded, still not looking his direction, pretending to watch the show, but aware of him, the weight on the other end of the cushions and just his presence in the room. He snorted at some catty thing one of the contestants said, and drew his legs up onto the couch, knees bent, leaning sideways on the back of the sofa.

"I feel a lot better," I said, and stretched my feet, careful not to tip the crane, nudging his toes with my own. He jumped, and I felt his tension, but I just smiled, watching the show.

"He'd have won that challenge if he'd cut that on the bias," I said after a while, and we sat there like that as the anxiety slowly left him, and he finally straightened his legs, heels sliding along the outside of my calves, up past my knees, trapping my thighs with his feet.

"Yeah?" he asked, and I nodded, smiling again, but the confirmation wasn't about the TV show, it was about him touching me, and that I wasn't made of glass, I wouldn't shatter with contact, and I reveled in it, the pressure of muscle and bone against mine, easing my lonely bones. I reached down, wanting more, and rubbed his foot through his sock, not on the bottom where he was ticklish, but across the hard calluses on the fleshy part under his toes. He closed his eyes.

"That's incredible," he whispered, and I watched him relax, his face growing soft, lips parting slightly, and his breathing evened out with deeper, longer breaths, tension easing from his hands, neck and shoulders surrendering to slumber.

I wished I had a sketch pad, not that I would be able to hold it for very long, but a lock of his hair had fallen over his cheek, and I wanted to draw the texture of it if I couldn't touch him, the softness of the curls against the pale, still planes of his face, a morning sun demi-god at rest.

"Poor bastard," whispered Edward from behind me. "We've got to leave in twenty minutes or we'll be late."

"I hate to wake him," Emmett rumbled.

"Then don't." Esme spoke softly, but her words were clipped, stern. "He can miss a day of school."

Jasper shifted, and we all held our breath, but he only settled deeper in, hand curving around my calf.

"Are _you_ comfortable?" Esme asked me, and I nodded. She laid a quilt over both of us, turned the TV volume down, and ushered my brothers out of the room.

I rescued the paper origami from the blankets. I asked him once how many he was going to make and he gave me a secret smile and said "a thousand." I wondered what number this one was. Sometimes they were of music paper with a melody hidden inside, or of poetry he'd torn out of a book, and lately my chemistry worksheets were delivered in folded avian form. Some were tiny, made of foil from candy, or scraps of fancy colored paper, gorgeous jewels I couldn't bear to open, even if they had secrets inside. This one was white, normal cheap printer paper, but there was writing on it, the marks bleeding through in reverse. I opened it, smoothing the folds, and I traced his handwriting with my fingertips.

_Unknowingly, we breathe the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a cup of rain_. –Ihab Hassan

I wondered who Ihab Hassan was, and if he was alive, and I hoped he was nice, and that somewhere a drift of karma would be good to him, that he could pass on his words to a boy who would write them down and give them as a gift.

**Jasper:**  
I sat down at my lab table in Chemistry class, ignoring the seat next to me that had been empty for the past three weeks. Sometimes I'd put a book on her chair like a booster seat, just to tease her, and she would sit, straddling her legs over it, dress riding up her thighs, and she'd grind suggestively, just to make me envious of a book.

"Jasper?" asked a voice behind me. "Would you like a lab partner today?"

Angela snorted in amusement, and I frowned at Jessica Stanley, confused. She blinked twice, eyes coated with pink powder.

"Are you trying to make Newton jealous?" I asked, concerned for her.

She gawked at me, face turning a strange color under the layers of her make-up.

"Don't be stupid, Jess." Lauren Mallory grabbed her friend's arm and shoved her into a chair at another table. "Alice will cut you faster than you can drop to your rug-burned knees."

"Is she even coming back?" asked Jessica."How much time do you get to take for an independent study, anyway?"

I ground my teeth, suddenly wanting to punch the idiot girl in the back of the head, and forced myself to keep my temper. Yes, Alice was coming back. She was healing quickly, faster than Carlisle had dared to let us hope, completely off the painkillers except to fall asleep, where I held her on the sofa, little body flat against my chest, bolstered by pillows so we wouldn't move. I woke with stiff muscles from not moving all night, and an embarrassingly stiff dick from dreams and her ass wedged between my thighs, but I slept, and it was a generous compromise.

Bella slid into Alice's seat just as the bell rang, the only person I didn't resent sitting there.

"I need to talk to you," she said, biting her chapped lower lip, anxious.

"At lunch?" I asked.

She nodded, but as the teacher passed out the lab equipment, she began speaking in a low voice.

"Look. This is really, really wrong for me tell you this, but I heard my dad and Billy arguing last night."

I handed her the safety glasses, and measured the liquid into the glass beaker, waiting for her to go on.

"It has something to do with that body that they found that got mauled by a bear."

My heart hit my ribcage hard, and I swallowed against the dryness in my mouth.

"Did they decide it was a bear?" I asked, carefully.

"Well, no, because he doesn't want the entire town to freak out. But that's not what I'm worried about."

Charlie Swan was clever, I thought. Slowly letting a town hear a rumor about an animal attack would make them properly cautious. Warning them about a murder done with bare hands would cause hysteria.

Bella toyed with the pipette, not looking at me, obviously trying to make up her mind about how much she should say.

"But because the guy was apparently some kind of major drug dealer, there's a federal investigation." She continued to explain, "Billy is mad because he doesn't think the FBI should have jurisdiction on the reservation, and he doesn't want them coming in and asking questions."

I set down the jar of chemicals and wiped my hands on my jeans, wondering if I was leaving sweat stains.

"Dad says it's a waste of time, and that no trail would be left after a month of Forks weather, but they want to bring in dogs. Sniffer dogs."

I looked at her in shock, wondering what she knew, why she would tell me this, and if the dogs would lead back to me, because I'd touched the corpse.

She looked at me and nodded.

"Yeah," she whispered. "I'm worried about Sam. If they stop by his place, and he's growing-" She didn't finish the sentence.

I stared at her, finally understanding what she was getting at, and shook my head.

"He's not, right now. Wrong time of year; he would blow his profit on the heating bill."

She breathed a sigh of relief, and I forced myself to relax.

"Good. It would be so awful for the Q'wolves, and the Blues festival, too, if he got busted just because they were looking for a bear or a mountain lion or something."

I nodded, and my smile wasn't forced, the irony of the situation spinning with my speculations.

We finished the lab, writing down an extra summary of the findings for Alice.

"Are you coming over tonight?" I asked, right before the bell rang.

She nodded.

"Do you think we could record the refrain? If I get the timing right, we can keep going and record Alice after, when she's up for it."

"Is that a good idea?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

It wasn't, really. My girlfriend's timing was all over the place, her talent in improvisation. When she was trying to follow someone else, she tended to anticipate and jump her cues. But we were running out of time, and _Tropic of Virgo_ needed to come out before we went on tour this summer, not after. We'd made the mistake of announcing the album to the reporter, and nothing made folks lose interest in a band more than extended release dates.

"I'll be there," Bella said, patting my arm.

Lunch was dull. Civics was dreary. World lit was a zombie fest, though Angela caught me as class was letting out.

"How's Alice?" She asked. She and Bella were the only two people at school who knew that Alice wasn't doing an "independent study."

"She's coming along," I said. "You should come say hello."

"Could I!?"

"She gets tired easily, but she's also going stir crazy. She'd love to see you."

"Could I come this weekend? I have an idea for the video. It's almost done, and I've got some fantastic cuts, but I want to try something that might need some still shots. Do you think she'd be up for it?"

"You'd have to ask her." I wasn't sure she'd be up for pictures; she was still very self conscious, and even asked Rosalie to cut her hair, rather than going to a hair dresser.

"I'll call her. I can't wait for you to see it," she said.

"Bring Ben, too. He hasn't kicked my ass in chess lately."

She laughed, and I left school in a good mood, pleased to have something to offer Alice to combat her boredom, despite the empty back seat of Edward's Volvo and stray thoughts of dogs.

She wasn't on the couch when we got home, or in her room or mine, and the bathroom door wasn't closed. I called her phone, but my tone rang from the sofa, muffled by the cushions. Just as I began to worry, Bella called my name from the kitchen.

Edward held the door to the basement wide, broad grin on his face.

From downstairs came the unmistakable moan of a chromatic harmonica, breathy notes mimicking Cat Power's voice on "New York."

Emmett slapped me on the back, and Rose pushed me toward the stairs. My feet hardly landed on them.

* * *

What show do you watch when you're stuck on the couch for a while?


	12. Strange Tides

Most of us like to watch the Food Network and detective shows when we are laid up on the couch. I like Monty Python and Martha Stewart; they blend well.

MsKathy did something amazing, and there's a tiny bit in there called "Soft Focus" that ties in to this.  
ElleCC makes my run-on sentences seem less so.  
There's a forum on T'ed. I post teasers and songs sometimes.  
Stephenie owns their names, I claim the rest.

* * *

March

**Alice:  
**"You're hurting," Bella said, frowning at me as she compared our chemistry notes. "Too soon to be back in school?"

"No, I'm okay." I hadn't told her about the appointment today, that Esme had picked me up after art class to take me to Port Angeles for a "fill up," one hundred cc's of saline in each side. I still wasn't able to talk about the details of the ongoing procedures to anyone but Dad, and even then I was uncomfortable. I'd stared at the ceiling as the plastic surgeon rummaged through the equipment and then poked me. She had been strangely excited that it had hurt, and while I tried to share her enthusiasm that my nerves were already reconnecting, I wished they could have waited a little longer. It had made me feel tight and aching, the way I used to when I had real boobs and they would swell each month right before my period, and I had to sort of giggle as I thought about it, because I wouldn't be getting those anymore either, and _that_ was a nice side effect.

I'd been back at school three days and was surprised at how little had changed; the only eventful thing that had happened was that some higher-up-than-Forks-policemen came to the high school with sniffer dogs and Chelsea Afton got suspended for having her mother's prescription drugs in her locker. Chemistry with Jasper was still the highpoint of the day, my "Life" drawing class was still using the same fake fruit, Edward and Bella still made sucky face in our secret hideout in the balcony of the music auditorium – though their veiled looks and determined restraint made me wonder if they had gone beyond make out sessions while I was gone – and the bitch brigade was still bitchy. Jessica's insecure jealously and Lauren's conniving ambition were both still kept in check by Angela Weber's gentle snark. I'd missed them all in a strange fashion, the way one goes to see the voracious animals at the zoo, not that Angela was deadly, though she had a steel core she drew on when needed, usually to stand up to Lauren Mallory's occasional fuckery. I wondered what would happen to Jessica when the other two left Forks. I had a sneaky that she would get pregnant very quickly after high school, to fill the emotional hole left by the other two, God help the child. The three had been friends since daycare; my mother had been tolerant of Reverend Weber's wife, but despised the mothers of the other two, and I was never part of their vicious circle.

Angela and I had become friends as the band got good, and even more through her relationship with Bella, and all three of my guys sometimes played chess with Ben. They had both come by last weekend to shoot some extra bits for the video she was working on for us. We'd batted around some ideas, and then I found a piece of chartreuse velveteen that I was going to make a into a smoking jacket for Jasper but never did because he really did look awful in that color, which she said would be perfect as a makeshift green screen, and so we draped it over the baby grand in Edward's room while he played, and then held it in front of Rosalie's torso while she faked some chords. Angela had said today that the video was almost finished, and I was terribly excited about it.

"Did you take a pill?" Jasper asked.

"She must have." Edward was splayed belly down over a beanbag, one earbud in, tapping notes on the piano app on his iPhone.

"You can tell?" I asked.

"Well," Bella laughed, "you aren't talking."

I stuck my tongue out at her, and laughed too, which pulled at my lower belly a little, but it was a stretchy hurt and felt good.

"I'll pass out soon. I get dopey within twenty minutes of taking one."

"What's it like?" Jasper asked. "The Vicodin?"

He looked up at me from under his hair, his expression veiled and soft, and for a moment I was worried that he was asking for one, and that was a slippery slope I wasn't willing to ride, but his expression changed and he shook his head at me, rolling his eyes, and I was embarrassed that I had misunderstood his question.

"What music do you hear in your head?" interpreted Edward.

"Cut that out," Jazz said, annoyed at Edward's habit of stealing his words. Then he turned to me, and nodded. "Yeah. What he said."

I closed my eyes and tried to pull my brain back from its fixation to a quote on his wall, scribbled in pencil, upside down:

"_A racecar goes back and forth."_

"You know that Sade song that the Deftones cover? I think it's 'Ordinary Love'?" I tried to explain, and Bella reached for her phone; I should have guessed she would have that song. "It's somehow duller than the original, and off-kilter and even off-key sometimes, but it's easier, with a weird numbing sweetness that makes your stomach hurt a little?"

She docked her phone in the speakers, and as the electric drums and steady bass opened the song, I nodded. A light male voice cried the words, all emo and aching.

"Show us." Jasper slid his hands around me, pushing me to my feet, and touched my ear with his lips in a whisper. "Dance for me."

He stepped away, and I took a deep breath, afraid, scared that I wouldn't be able to make my body move to the music, that my dancing would be scarred, too.

I closed my eyes and found the beat with my toes, and rocked on my heels, ankles taking only tiny steps to spin, keeping my arms and shoulders still, just twisting my spine to the rhythm. I kept my hands clasped together in front of me, shy and protective of my tender parts, still fluid with the crooning melody, looking for myself in the movement, head back to listen to the music through the fog in my brain.

After the first verse of the song, I felt the air change, cooler, and at the gentle click of the door latch, I opened my eyes to see only Jasper, standing a few feet in front of me.

We were alone.

His eyes were turquoise, warmed by the light from the lantern that glowed with an amber bulb that cast odd yellow shapes onto the ceiling through the punched brass. His face was heated, expression tight, and I wanted to reach for him.

He moved, then, closer, as if he felt my need, close enough that I felt the heat from his skin, chest moving up and down faster than usual, and I felt pinned, anchored to the floor, unable to move forward, to part the curtain of separation that kept us from touching, from admitting to the lust and acknowledging the fear – except we were beyond that now, we knew each other too well – and the tension in his wrists, bent slightly to reach for me, gave him away as much as his breathing, the way he swallowed, the tilt of his head as he watched my face while I avoided his darkened eyes.

I swayed to the music, floating in front of him as he stood still, and I couldn't bear it anymore, the _not_ touching, and finally pushed through the barrier between us, placing my palm flat on his stomach, fingers splayed, feeling the muscle and the heat of him through his shirt.

He shivered, and cupped my hips in his hands, and I was afraid that he would lock his arms to keep me away, so I lurched forward and pressed up against him before he could force the distance, and he didn't fight me.

He pulled me to him, aligning my body to his, and I slid my arms around him for the first time in almost a month, and the awareness of him – of his masculinity and solid strength – pounded through me and answered to all that was female that had been forced into dormancy as my body healed. I rested my head against his chest, cheek and ear to his heartbeat, and smelled him, the sweet salty boy-musk that was his alone, and I breathed him deep, listening to the music pulse through me, slowed by the drugs that kept me numb. I wanted to cry for him, and for me, that I couldn't have him, and he wanted me, I could feel it, his erection against me, and I couldn't ignore it anymore, the desire that raced through my bloodstream. I pulled away to look up at him, pleading without words, sliding my hands under the back of his shirt.

"Alice, don't," he gasped, the shadows eclipsing his face. His eyes were midnight in the dark, burning me. "Don't ask me to hurt you."

I jerked my gaze from his and nodded, accepting his rejection, ashamed that I had asked, and wondered, perversely, at my lack of tears, at how easy it was to ignore the pain in my chest that had nothing to do with surgery. I stepped away as the song ended.

He moved then, fast enough to startle me, cupping my face in his palm, bending, mouth on mine, full onslaught of lips, tongue, ardor and excitement, not gentle, not a teasing promise of someday, but a heavy declaration of want and need and now, control pushed to the breaking point, and I returned the kiss, desperation in my hands, my teeth, the whimper in my throat as I tasted his mouth and his desire.

He pulled back just as suddenly, panting, hands hard on my hips, glowering at me.

"Jasper," I whispered through swollen lips, one more plea, but I knew he would leave.

"Don't," he said again, voice a broken rasp. He stepped away, but not before I saw something else in his face, beyond the naked lust and the frustration.

The door closed behind him, the click of the latch now harsh in the silence, but I sighed into the half-light and raised my arms as high as my tender muscles allowed them to stretch, and spun slowly, small steps to collapse in his bed, heart still pounding.

He'd smiled, a gloating smirk of satisfaction that he'd been unable to hide, that he'd managed to make me respond that quickly, that the chemistry between us was still ripe and reactive.

I smiled with the same relief as the opiates took over, lulling my limbs and the pressure on reshaped flesh; the heat between my legs still throbbed, sharp with insistence and anticipation, and I welcomed the burn as I drifted off, reveling in the proof that I was still myself and as affected by him as ever.

Sometime later, I felt him, sliding into bed next to me, aware of his skin even through the haze of sleep.

**Jasper:**  
I was officially the horniest guy in Forks, Washington.

Not that every fourteen-year-old virgin in town didn't give me a good run for the money, but to have had what I've had, and then have it inches away from me every night, willing and _wanting_? I was afraid even my tongue was going to start getting hard.

Two weeks she'd been back in my bed, our goodnight kisses more and more explicit every evening, her sighs and lips more longing, more tantalizing, more excruciating, and I wanted more, and more and more.

Tonight had been no different, and I lay in the dark, hard and aching, still feeling the softness at the back of her neck under my fingertips, even though her breathing had slowed to the steady rhythm of sleep. My mouth was still swollen from her little teeth nibbling at my lower lip, and my pajama fly caught at the head of my dick, the fabric sticking to the pre-come that had leaked as she'd run her fingers through my hair and sucked on my neck under my earlobe, on the spot that made me crazy.

I'd let it go too far tonight, her moans and whispers of my name getting under my skin, shredding my self control, and I'd kissed her until her spine was undulating with the unconscious movements of her hips, and I'd pulled away only after I realized I was fucking her mouth with my tongue.

The noise she'd made, the tiny sob of disappointment, frustration and _acceptance_ still echoed in the dark, and ripped at my chest.

I hated the acquiescence, the way she retreated. I understood her lack of self confidence; I'd looked with her when she'd done her research on-line, held her in my lap when she cried at the pictures of the various steps in the procedure. I knew logically what was going on, how she must look under her frumpy pajamas, and that she might not want me to see, but I didn't care. I wanted _her_ back, feisty and funny and sexy and skin on skin, rubbing up against me and grinding.

Our kisses at night were teases of that, desperate midnight reminders of what we had and would have again, and though necessary for our peace of mind, that we were still ourselves, they left my nuts swollen and my mind a mess.

She sighed in her sleep, a ghost of her earlier moan, and I gave up, and slid from under the covers to the bathroom.

I didn't even take a shower, just pulled my flannels down and grabbed, pulling, feeling guilty because she couldn't or wouldn't take this satisfaction for herself. When the skin dragged in my fist uncomfortably, I squirted a bit of her face cream onto my palm, feeling guilty about that, too, but the cool slide of my hand felt good, and it smelled like her, and within seconds I was there, flared head pushing through my tight grip, the rush from toes to scalp sudden as my pressurized balls unloaded with relief into the hand towel I grabbed at the last second.

I panted into the bathroom, wondering why I was so embarrassed; it was normal and I'd done it all the time when Alice and I were only in the messing around stage. I threw the towel in the hamper, pulled up my pants, and slunk back into bed.

"Better?" whispered Alice, her voice thick with sleep, fingers reaching out to brush my arm.

I winced in the dark, and nodded. "Yeah."

"Good," she said, and I ground my teeth, mortified and somehow amused, and then rock hard again as she said, "You should have let me help."

I turned to look at her, but she'd already fallen back to sleep.

I lay in the dark, no music in my head, just a quote from a book by Albert Camus, spinning around in my brain, torturing me.

"_She mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was likely why she loved me, but that someday I might disgust her for the same reason…"_

After a while, I followed her into my dreams.

Nothing was different in the morning, though Bella seemed more relaxed around me, and I wondered if I had been that much of a grumpy bastard recently. Probably.

At lunch, Angela and Ben sat with us, and we grouped around his laptop to watch the video she'd finally finished.

The song was short, combining two of Bella's poetry bits, one about an archangel and another about a phoenix, and though she hadn't intended it that way, I'd flipped the gender of the narration, giving Emmett spoken word on the intro, turning her feminine angle into grindy blues, and butted it up against a simple hook Edward had written a while ago. It was good, more refined that anything on the EP, and our plan was to release it on the internet on video in order to spark interest for the new album.

Now, watching as the letterbox faded to grey, I wasn't so sure.

Rosalie was grinning as Alice and Bella both hugged Angela, bouncing around and making the noises that girls do, and Ben was talking to Emmett about formats and resolution quality and bits per inch, and I felt Edward's glance before I met it, his uncertainty vibrating off his skin.

"I don't know, man," he said for my ears alone, running his hands through his hair. "It's good. Excellent quality, but fuck, do I really look at her like that?"

"It's not such a bad thing, dude," I said. "It saves you from having to piss on her leg when we're out in public."

Angela had done what I asked. I gave her carte blanche, my only stipulation being that it was clear we were paired. I wanted our first video to be a representation of us as couples, no doubt left that any of us were unavailable for public consumption. She'd done it, and done it surprisingly well, the interactions between us chaste in gesture, but blatant with intent and expression.

Rosalie kicked my foot, and I looked at her and the question in her face. She leaned over and poked at the laptop, starting it again.

I watched it, trying to be objective as Alice's form spun out onto the stage. The short little dress wasn't showing off _that_ much of her legs, I reasoned with myself.

She grinned as she came up next to me to watch, hand sliding into mine, fingers fluttering with her excitement. We watched together, and I could feel her quivering next to me, girly energy and pride and just Alice, and I wished we weren't in school, so I could kiss her.

"Look how sexy I was!" she whispered, but there was a sad quality to her laughter that tore my heart out, and made Edward draw his breath sharply.

"Upload it," I told Ben, and my stepbrother nodded, not meeting my eyes.

The girls squealed again, and I let their laughter carry me the rest of the day.

**Alice:**  
"Alice, could you take Seth home? Ed and Em and I are going to -_holy fuck!_"

I stood still in the mirror as Jasper stopped short in the doorway between our rooms.

I met his gaze the in the silver surface, my heart slamming in my chest as I felt like prey, stalked by the wild intensity in his eyes. He moved forward, boots stealthy on the carpet, then threatening, clicking on the hardwood as he approached me.

He reached out a fingertip and smoothed the twist from a ribbon that laced the back of my forest green corset. More ribbons tied the front, pulling the silk cups high, crisscrossing down my sternum.

His fingers trailed down my spine, fondling the bow that connected the ribbons of the little bottoms together, eyes flicking from my reflection in the mirror to the path his fingers were tickling over my skin, and back again.

"Alice," he whispered, and I waited for him to say more, wondering if he was even aware he'd spoken. I smiled at him, nervous and excited and shy, which I never am, and tried to keep from covering up with my arms and hands. I once saw a documentary about the Venus de Milo, and someone had taken her pose and musculature and figured out that she was covering up her boobs with her missing hands. Poor thing was just trying to be modest and now was the most celebrated nude in the world. She didn't have huge boobs either. Mine now fit nicely into the little lingerie set, lace covering the scars except for the one in my belly button, and I didn't mind that one. The bottoms rose high enough to cover the last light bandage below my bikini line.

"I can take Seth home," I said. "I'll take Sue that stuff Mom needs her to sign."

"What?" he said, after a moment, eyes still stuck in the mirror.

"You wanted me to take Seth home?"

"Yeah." He swallowed. "What?"

I laughed at him, delighting in his distraction, and wriggled into a pair of jeans, ones I couldn't really wear to school because they had a v-back that dipped low, now framing the green bow that peeked out of the crack of my ass. Jasper loved them.

"How much longer?" he asked through his teeth, though I was sure he was counting days as much as I was.

"A month and a half?" I said, looking away, trying to ignore the fear and insecurity that tangled like a knot of yarn in my belly, knowing I was being silly, that I was fine.

"And you're wearing that _now_?"

"At least I get to keep it on for more than five minutes!" I retorted.

He chuckled, eyes still dark, and refocused on my reflection. He frowned, and then gripped my shoulders and spun me around to face him, eyes trained downward, curious.

"Um." He raised an eyebrow. "Did you-? Are you, er, bigger?"

I nodded, embarrassed, but pleased he'd noticed, and turned back to the glass, surveying my shape.

"I was between sizes of the permanents, and it was either go up or go down, and so…" I'd never been too terribly concerned with my Venus sized boobs - when you are four foot eleven, you don't need much, all it takes is a good push-up bra to make one look busty, but I certainly didn't want to feel _less_ feminine after all this, so the latest and last fill had taken me up half a cup size."You don't mind, do you?"

"Alice, I'm an ass-man. You know that," Jasper said, slapping the aforementioned anatomy.

I laughed, and turned to look for a sweater long enough to cover the back of the jeans.

"When do I get to see them?" he asked, voice wistful.

"They're not finished, yet." I said, through the angora. He hadn't pressed for details or pushed to see, and for that I was grateful. The doctors all seemed to be of two schools of thought: one side acted like they thought I should be comfortable and accepting of everything that was going on, and the other side let me be as detached as I wanted, and so I left most of the involvement to Dad, and figured I'd get reacquainted with myself when I was all done.

"I miss your skin," he said, and my heart did something lovely in my chest. I reached up and kissed him, soft, lingering to taste his bottom lip, pulling back before the heat flared too hot between us.

He handed me his keys after demanding another kiss for them, and I went to Esme's sunroom for the packet she'd left for Sue, plans and permits for a women's facility on the reservation. Some new report had come out recently, the numbers showing that Native American women as a group were the least likely to get breast cancer, but the most likely to die from it, and Esme and Sue's proposal for an early detection clinic was getting generous grant funds.

Seth was quiet in the car, but I got him to laugh with stories about Emmett and Edward when they were little. His breath was kind of bad, but his boy-crush on my brother was cute, and the drive took a shorter amount of time than I thought. I pulled up to Sue's, the small log house nestled in the pines near the break of the beach, and I wondered if I could live so close to the ocean, on the edge of something so rough and untamed. I could see Bella here, wild in the wind and water, but definitely not Rosalie.

Sue was on the phone, and took the packet from me, and through her whispers and gestures I figured out that she wanted me to stay so she could get the forms back to Esme, but couldn't get off the phone.

"Can I walk on the beach?" I whispered, pointing out her window.

She nodded, relieved, and turned back to her conversation.

I wandered down a path toward the water, getting grey sand in my little flat shoes, and picked my way though twisted driftwood, to the water. Huge rocks thrust out of the ocean like giant teeth, and I could easily imagine how the legends of battles with giant whales got started. The silence was gorgeous, and I basked in it, the solitude comforting, somehow. I walked on, my thoughts calm and easy. I wished I had my harmonica, that I could copy the noise of the wind on the waves.

A wine bottle caught my eye, half buried in the sand, green as the silk I wearing under my clothes, glass smoothed by the sea until it seemed to glow from within. I dug it out, thinking it would make a good addition to the plastic fruit in my still life class. I moved up the shore, finding a large feather, and in toward the trees, gleaning a pine cone. A half-hidden path led into the woods, and I bent at the entrance to pick up a shoe, once a fine Italian wingtip, but now the brown leather was cracked by salt air and rain, black laces crumbling under my fingers.

"Don't go in there." Seth's voice startled me, and I jumped, clutching my found objects to my chest. His face was tight with stress, and his eyes were darting everywhere except the direction of the path.

"All right," I said, keeping my voice calm while my heart settled down. I hadn't heard him behind me at all.

He backed away from the opening at the trees, and I followed, watching as his agitation eased the farther we got from the spot.

"Is your mother off the phone?" I asked as I realized he was leading me back toward their house.

He nodded, and it seemed like the interaction was helping him to calm down.

"What's that up there?" I asked, pointing off in the distance to a large building built on a bluff, though I recognized it from pictures. I just wanted to keep him talking.

"The Res Center. Mom has meetings there."

"She's on the Quileute Council, isn't she?"

"She's the youngest elder," he said, smiling a little at the way that sounded. "It makes them mad that we're nice to Cullens."

I tried to hide my amusement at his phrasing; they could have been nice to "bears."

"But she says they are just being stupid," he continued, voice low and serious under the wind. "And I think so too. Doctor Cullen saved my life, and Edward can play anything."

I smiled at him, and we walked back to the house in silence, where Sue laughed and said I was welcome to all the beach junk I wanted, and handed me the packet to take back to Esme. I drove home contemplating the ocean, mysterious paths in the woods, and how on earth I was going to be able to keep my hands off my boyfriend for the next six weeks.

* * *

How are you peculiar?


	13. Sole Kiss

Our peculiarities are varied, but mostly benign. I like to eat with my fingers.

The Haiti fics are amazing! Love to all who participated.

ElleCC beta's this, Stephenie owns what is hers.

* * *

April  
**Jasper:**  
The chopstick in Emmett's hand broke in half as he slammed it on the bottom of my trash can, so Edward threw him a crusty spoon that had been on my desk for days. Em caught it and kept playing, barely missing a beat. I ground in, heavy bass drive, taking part of the guitar melody as Ed sang _"I wanna live with a cinnamon girl…" _onType O Negative's electric metal version that I loved, but Rosalie refused to play.

"The Q'Wolves should do that one," Emmett mused, as we finished. He stretched his hand out, and I passed him the bottle. "Cinnamon sounds like a good description of a Native chick's skin."

"Leah would fucking scream." Edward took a swig and grimaced appreciatively, as one should when drinking Blanton's.

"Maybe not," Emmett said. "She's pretty cool. I think she could play a mean stick if Sam would let her."

"Didn't they date?" I asked.

"A long time ago. She and Paul tried to go out, too, but Seth fucking freaked out on them, and Paul backed off that craziness, fast."

"I thought she was gay," Edward said.

I shook my head. "I think she's just hard. Like Rose."

Emmett spluttered over the bourbon bottle.

"Hey, don't backwash in my bourbon, uncouth motherfucker." I scowled at him.

"Rose isn't hard, dude. Not at all." He coughed through his laughter.

"When are they coming back, anyway?" Edward asked.

"Any minute," I said, passing him my stash. "Roll us a couple."

He looked at me, and I watched emotions flicker across his face as he sorted his thoughts. His mouth moved, and I waited, patient.

"You're hitting it pretty hard, lately," he mumbled, finally.

I looked at him, surprise filtering through the whiskey.

"Give him a break, Bro. He hasn't gotten laid since the end of January." I wasn't sure if I wanted to thank Emmett for his astute observation or not.

"It's just that we need to be pretty clean on the tour, and it's not going to be easy on any of us if you're having DT's on an airplane over the Atlantic." Edward fished the rolling papers out of the bag. Three slid from the cardboard when he tried to pull two, and I snagged it.

"Actually," I said, "we need to be clean before we even go to Olympia. I'm glad as fuck I didn't get near those dogs in November."

"Were you carrying!?" Emmett asked.

"Hell no!" I glared at him. "But the smell sticks to clothes, and I don't want to answer any questions about my lifestyle."

Edward tossed me the lighter.

"You rolled, you get the first hit." I threw it back.

"That's mighty nice of you, brother."

"I am a gentleman, you intervening asshole."

He dragged, managing to hold the joint and flip me off at the same time.

I played lazy chords as the hazy smoke meandered through my skull, and Emmett pointed out invisible shapes on the ceiling, the way one sees rabbits in clouds.

Time stood still and rushed by all at once. I wondered how Alice's appointment went. This was just a follow up, and she only had to go to Port Angeles, not Seattle. Her second surgery had been much easier than the first, and she'd only spent the weekend on the couch. She'd been sore, but apparently that was a good thing. I had no real idea what was going on, I just held her and tried to pretend I didn't have a perpetual hard-on.

The scrape of the lighter flint pulled me from thoughts of her skin.

"Dude." Edward passed to his older brother, and exhaled hard. "You know that weird semi-orgasmic feel you get right before you sneeze or have a pee shiver?"

I looked up from the square of onionskin paper I was trying to fold into a crane and blinked at him.

"I feel like I'm holding steady right there." He scratched the back of his neck, like he had fleas.

"If I admit to understanding that," Emmett said, nudging me, "does that mean I'm as gay as he is?"

"Fuck you, Pud-monkey," Edward said, blowing a smoke ring. "I heard you singing Savage Garden in the shower the other day."

"What are you doing looking at me while I shower? That's like gay incest!"

_"I would fly you to the moon and back, if you would be my baby…"_ Edward flamed in a high pitched falsetto.

"Um, is there something I should know?" Bella asked from the doorway, eyes huge.

Rosalie snorted and claimed a bean bag.

Edward defended his heterosexuality as Alice spun into the room, arms full of bags. She kissed me on the cheek and went through the connecting door to drop off her loot. I smiled to myself at her subtle tease; she could have gone into her room though her own door, but she was showing off where she had shopped. It worked, as my clouded brain delightfully pondered what might be in the pastel bags.

I liked lingerie. I liked the structure and architecture of it, the way the pieces of fabric lay over curves, and the Chinese puzzle of straps and hooks and laces that revealed the prize inside. I liked how it looked empty on the floor, too, like a heap of satin shadows, still having some of the shape of the girl who wore it.

"Oh, you did _not_!" Bella held up the empty bag of chocolate kisses.

"I only had a few," Edward protested.

"Huh. No kisses for me, none for you!" She turned her back and tapped her foot.

"You would do that to me?! Orangupoontang over there was the one who ate them all!"

_"The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder,"_ I quoted.

"Jane Austen?" Bella asked, momentarily distracted.

"Very good."

"That is so not fair," moaned Edward.

Emmett gave him an angelic smile, and held out a hoarded foil-wrapped chocolate to Rosalie in a grand gesture. She accepted like a queen, and he pulled her to her feet.

"Bro," he said, turning to his little brother, "women are not a democracy."

They left, leaving my younger stepbrother gaping after them, his mouth moving like a gasping fish.

**Alice:  
** I sat at Charlie Swan's kitchen table, taking advantage of the last of the afternoon's natural light to finish the background of my still life, scumbling in a lavender oil pastel and then smudging it into the dark paper with my fingertips, bouncing in my seat to "Chick Habit," a goofy tune to ease the stress of the day. I'd banished Edward and Bella to her room, as they were having so much homework non-sex that I thought their textbooks would start humping, and I figured at least two of the three of us should get some satisfaction, and it couldn't be me, because I still had another three weeks before I could get mine.

I was starting to climb the proverbial walls, and Jasper's tension was a thick rope that tied and bound me every time he looked in my direction. He spent a lot of time in the basement, channeling his energy and frustration into the new album, and each track he mastered seemed sexier and darker than the last. The day I'd worn perfume he'd been furious, and I still thought of the way he'd kissed me, so hard, his tongue in my mouth an obvious substitute, and I'd tugged at the buttons of his jeans and dropped to my knees, and he'd pulled away, red-faced and angry, saying if I couldn't get off, he wouldn't either, and I'd cried because I couldn't bring myself to try, and he held me and rocked me and made me promise not to wear perfume because it was too much for him to take.

Chemistry class was the worst, for some strange reason. Sitting there, not touching, having him next to me, it made me aware of the little things, the minutiae of the pattern that the tiny blond hairs on his arms made, and the angle of his legs as he crossed his boots at the ankles, the way his collar folded at the back of his neck.

School was beginning to be a pain in the ass. The video was brilliant, and supposedly was getting air time on the video channels, though I never saw it, but it meant that we got a lot of attention at school – to the point of people taking pictures of us in the hallway and putting them on Twitter, which was kind of creepy – and Edward was swarmed by freshmen whenever we tried to eat lunch in the cafeteria, which was funny. We found an unexpected ally in Jessica Stanley, who appointed herself Breaking Dawn's chief bodyguard, and sunk her nails into the neck of anyone who was too pushy. The school itself was actually pretty supportive; Angela had written some sort of gushy letter to the company that made her fancy camera, and they did some kind of ad campaign and gave Forks High a bunch of equipment for the audio-visual class. The drawback was that Dad and Esme decided they needed to hire a lawyer to figure out copyright crap and who owned what with anything that the band produced, and that took most of the money we'd made on iTunes from the _Songs for Elizabeth_ sales.

Pounding feet sounded on the stairs as Charlie Swan's cruiser pulled into the driveway, and Twin and Bella were settled on the couch, books in hand, seconds before he walked in the door.

The chief was a quiet man, as shy as Bella, with a dry sense of humor under his Tom Selleck moustache. He fit his clothes and his surroundings like he had sprung up out of the earth, born by this funny little town and molded of its damp clay.

"What are you working on?" he asked, coming to stand behind me.

He stared at the drawing a long time, and I wanted to squirm in my seat. I'd focused the detail mainly on the seagull feather and the stitching on the wingtip, letting the pinecone and bottle blur into the background.

"If you replaced the shoe with a seashell, I'd say you'd been at La Push," he said slowly.

"I found it there, too," I said, grinning. "Third Beach, near the Clearwater's house. I got bored with drawing fake fruit and plastic roses, and the teacher doesn't let us draw anything that is actually alive, which sucks, though kind of funny, because the French call a still life _nature morte, _which means dead nature, so it's kind of appropriate, actually, but she didn't mind when I brought it in, and the rest of the class is starting to bring in things, too. Six months into the school year and folks are finally starting to get creative _now?_ Someone brought in a bear skull, and I'd like to draw that, but too many people are grouped around it, and I hate bumping elbows with people when I sketch."

The funny look that Charlie got on his face whenever I talked to him eventually started to spread over his features, like he was trying to keep from laughing or crossing his eyes or maybe both.

Edward stood and said his goodbyes to Bella, shook Chief Swan's hand and helped me carry my drawing board to the Volvo, and I wasn't sorry to be going home.

Jasper was in the basement with Emmett and Rosalie, and the red light was on, and I didn't want to disturb them when they were recording.

I hurt a little, but not enough to take more than a Tylenol. The new gel implants were actually lighter than the saline expander ones I'd had, and were much more comfortable when I bent over. They felt better, too, kind of firm and squishy but not sloshy. I had one more appointment to go, and they wouldn't even have to put me fully under to do it; I'd have twilight sleep, like what people got when they had their wisdom teeth out. Dad said my scars looked great, but I didn't have much to compare with, and didn't like looking anyway.

I puttered around the house, moving slowly, waiting for the analgesic to kick in, unable to settle down. Esme was on the porch, giving Renee a maternal progress report on Bella over her cell phone, and Dad was still at work. I wandered into Edward's room, bored and restless. He was at his computer, but after giving me a long look, he moved to the piano and adjusted the bench, parallel to the keyboard, and patted it, inviting me to sit next to him, and I did. He played Amalie's waltz for me, the light melancholy notes easing my pain into nothingness.

The next day was the same as the previous, chemistry class a delicious torment, free study a giggle fest with Twin and Bella in the balcony, lunch feeling like feeding time at the aquarium with all the eyes on us. The only thing different was that my shoe was missing from the art room, and somehow I wasn't surprised, just intensely curious.

**Jasper:**  
Millie Verner opened the door and her sardonic smile at my shock made me feel worse.

Her face was gaunt, cheekbones sharp under eyes so dark with exhaustion and anemia that they looked bruised. The hand on the doorframe was purple with swollen veins and red spider webs under the skin, and the capped tube of a saline lock poked out obscenely from tape on her wrist.

She shuffled back from the door, and I stepped aside to let Alice enter. She bounced in carrying a paper plate full of fudge, set it on the table, greeted Millie and complimented her hat, picked up an afghan from the floor and folded it, exclaimed about the view of the lake from the back bay window, and then stood still, staring, unabashed, around the cottage.

For an awful guilty second, I regretted bringing her. The contrast between the two was jarring, like discordant notes; the health and verve of the one seemed almost vicious when compared to the decay of the other.

"Hey, Millie. You seem-" I shoved my hands in my pockets, looking everywhere but the skin where her hairline should have been, her crochet beanie slightly askew on her head, or the clothes that hung on her frame like she was a concentration camp victim. I tried to come up with something nice to say, but my throat got stuck.

"Jasper." Millie's voice made me jump out of my skin, and she held me with her eyes. "I look like shit. Now go make us all some tea."

I choked a bit on my embarrassed laughter and my "yes, ma'am," and grabbed the kettle, relieved to be doing something with my hands.

"Did you make this?" Alice stood in front of a tapestry collage thing hanging on the wall, its fibers and yarns all worked together to create an abstract sunrise.

"It was a gift," Millie said, smiling.

"It's gorgeous," my girlfriend said, dragging her fingers through some light blue strings, "Lovely to touch, too."

"So was the weaver," the older woman said, dark laughter under her tired voice.

Alice smirked, and they chatted about fibers and spinning and sheep and the difference between art and craft, while I puttered in the kitchen, putting some dishes away and filling the sugar bowl from the bag on the counter. I filled the mugs when the kettle hissed, and poked in the silverware drawer, looking for spoo-

"Boy, will you quit twitching? You're going to break something."

I stood still, feeling chastised, and somehow annoyed, like I was left out of their women thing.

"Alice, show me this video I keep hearing about," she said, after a moment.

Alice tinkered with her phone, and when Millie fussed at the size of the screen, I got her laptop from the living room and set it up on the table. We watched the video, and made depreciative noises at her compliments, but I still got hyper when I saw it. I refused to look at it often because I felt weird and conceited at the rush I got when I did, but the steadily rising numbers and comments on the web page and on YouTube were hard to ignore.

"That's at Aro's, isn't it?" Millie asked.

I nodded.

"I went there once."

"We're playing there next month," Alice said. "You should come. It's sold out, but we get a guest table. You could sit with Dad and Esme-"

"Alice-"

"The food is really good, and the piano is amazing – you should hear Edward on it – It's probably our last gig this small until we're old and washed up and people only recognize our music because they are in corporate commercials… and Siobhan will be there, I'll introduce you, you'll love her-"

"Alice, look at me." Millie shook her head. "Even if I'm around in May, I won't be in any shape to go to a fancy restaurant."

"You'll be fine! I can help. We'll find you a fun hat and some bright red lipstick, and you can be glamorous and tell everyone to fuck off, and-"

"Alice." I tried to interrupt, seeing the look the sick woman's face, but my voice squeaked like a bird's.

"Little girl, there is nothing glamorous about cancer, and I don't do pink ribbon fashion to make other people comfortable with the fact that I'm dying."

"But you have to keep trying! You have to have-"

"Alice, stop. No amount of make-up is going to keep the grim reaper off my door."

My girlfriend grew tiny in the chair, and I wanted to protect her from Millie's harsh reality.

"You don't even have hope?" she asked in a small voice.

"I have plenty of hopes," Millie V. said. "I hope they find a cure for this shit so pretty things like you don't have to cut their tits off in fear. I hope the Seahawks will win the Super Bowl someday, and I hope my talented young friends will get the fame and fortune they deserve."

"But you don't have hope for yourself?" I could hear the tears in my girlfriend's voice, even though I couldn't see her face. I brushed the back of my hand down her neck, feeling like I was intruding by offering comfort. I felt helpless and stupid.

"I'm not in hospice yet." Millie brandished her hand with the tube in it. "I'm still getting treatments. But I won't put on lipstick when I go just to make people think I'm _enjoying_ my death."

"Maybe lipstick is about showing people you enjoy living." Alice mumbled, sniffling.

The other woman looked at her for a long time, and then met my stare and looked away.

"You kids make me tired."

I set Esme's tin on the table, took Alice's hand, and left. None of us said goodbye.

Alice curled up in the passenger seat with her arms around her knees and stared out the window, and I pulled away from the house and drove too fast, not slowing until we were off the lake road. Neither of us spoke until we pulled up to Mrs. Randal's house.

"I don't want to go in," whispered Alice. "Can you just give her the fudge?"

"You should, darl. She usually needs help with stuff, and I could be a few minutes." I didn't want to leave her alone in the cold car, especially when she was upset. "Besides, the cats are really cute."

She nodded, but waited for me to open the door for her, a sign of her reticence.

The cats _were_ fun, and took a liking to her suede boots, sniffing the toes and rubbing up against her tights. Mrs. Randal told her all their names while I did the usual chores, and by the time we left, Alice was smiling.

Dora Gustavo met us at the door without her walker, took the plate but not the mint tin, and gave us a plate of shortbread to take home to Esme. She smiled non-stop, and I noticed that her eyebrows were starting to fill back in.

"I saw you on the news," she said, beaming. "We have celebrities right here in Forks!"

We laughed. I refused to make much of the local human interest story that came out of the TV station in Port Angeles after the video came out, but people in town were still talking about it.

Dora and Alice chatted, and as I carried the cookies to the car, my girlfriend predicted that this would be the last time I'd make a "delivery."

"She looks great," I agreed, not wanting to compare her appearance with Millie, but unable to keep the sicker woman's face out of my head.

I took the long way home, sensing an odd mood from the girl at my side, and after a few miles, she spoke.

"I feel guilty," she said, staring out the side window.

"About what?"

"Having the surgery."

"Why?!" I saw a tear track down her cheek and pulled over into a side road that led to a logging trail.

"Because I'm a coward. Because they are fighting the good fight, and winning, or even losing, but they are so brave and strong and real, and I took the easy way out so I wouldn't even have to be afraid, and I look at them, and feel so ashamed-"

I looked at her in horror as her tears stopped her words.

"Alice, that's insane! No one wants you to go through that!"

"I know. It's stupid. I just look at Millie, and I'm so relieved that I won't go through that, and I feel so guilty-"

She cried harder and curled up into a little ball of silk and suede, and I felt like an ass for calling her crazy. I turned the car off, pushed my seat back as far as it would go and grabbed her, hauling her over the console and pulling her over my lap. It was awkward and probably uncomfortable for her, but she sank into me and cried while I held her.

"I'm relieved, too," I said, into her hair.

She nodded into my chest and snuffled a bit and maybe even laughed at the ridiculousness of my understatement, and I stroked her back, hands flat as her breathing settled. It felt good, having her so close and maybe it was all the clothing and the coats making a buffer or the way she seemed so healthy compared to the women we'd seen today, but she suddenly felt less fragile, and I found myself hugging her, arms pulling her tight against me, hoping she could breathe, but unable to stop. If I could have drawn her entirely inside my body I would have, to make us so joined that she could feel how much she meant to me without the need for words or material existence.

But then she was hugging me back, thin arms curling around my torso, comforting _me_, and I let her, clinging to this tiny girl who conquered her world down to even what her chromosomes threw at her. She enveloped me with her warmth, her energy pressing into my body, and my chest wanted to explode.

She lifted her head then, arching back against the steering wheel, and smoothed my hair away from my face, looking into my eyes, and I was lost in hers, just staring, overwhelmed with how she could make me feel so much.

She smiled and leaned in to kiss me, a light brush on my bottom lip, tender, sweet, and brief.

Her mouth sparked my whole body like a match.

I gasped and blazed everywhere she touched me, one hand in my hair, one curled into the back of my neck, her thighs splayed over mine. She saw it, too, her eyes flashing gold with curiosity, and I tried to still my response, loosening my hands from her waist, trying to look away from her lips, and the way they parted slightly, leaning in to touch mine again. I held still, not breathing, until I felt the flick of her tongue, and then I was gone. I grabbed her hips, groaning, and pulled her hard against the instant steel in my pants, shoving up against the heat between her legs, and she moaned at the contact, shifting in my lap, pressing closer.

I cupped her ass in one hand and cradled her head with the other, bending her to my mouth and tongue, not knowing which was making me more frantic: the warmth of her lips and the way she tasted, or the pressure of soft girl flesh that was mashed deliciously against the head of my dick and grinding.

She clutched at me, pulling at my hair, panting, tongue under mine, mouth shockingly wet, and her frenzy fueled my own until I was rocking in the seat, shoving my hips between her legs. It wasn't what I wanted, this eruption of desperation and lust, movements stilted by the confines of the car and our clothes, but there was no way I could stop, no way I could deny her whispers or how good her neck tasted or the way she was dragging the heat between her thighs up over the length of my straining cock and bearing down against the tip, and down and up again, dry friction painful and heavenly. I could smell her, girl musk and heat and Alice, and her need gripped me as much as her fingers in my hair and her short nails digging into my neck.

I couldn't have stopped if the world was ending.

I was drowning in the noises she made as she took me with her, faster, harder, back arching in my arms as I thrust up against her, entire body suddenly groaning for release, and we came together, spasms soaking denim and silk.

I held her still, shocked by how quickly I had lost control, and listened to my heart ease from the preternatural post-coital thud. She pulled away, and I was worried at her silence, but then she flashed me a bashful grin.

"What?" I asked her, confused.

"It still works," she said, her face a little red. She kissed me twice, and climbed back into her seat.

"What does?"

"Me."

"Were you afraid it wouldn't?" I asked, amused. I shifted my seat back up and started the car.

"Maybe a little," she admitted.

I wanted to laugh, but I didn't dare. She was adorable, girly and sexy, mussed clothes and pink skin, and I couldn't believe she was mine. I pointed the car toward home.

"Should we test it again," I teased, "just to make sure?"

"I think that might be a good idea," she said, her voice prim but her eyes full of laughter.

* * *

What do you hope for?


	14. Dollars and Scents

I had to disable the anonymous reviews. I hated to do so, but too many people claiming to be in the medical industry have chastised me for misrepresenting their field, without giving me the means to write back and explain that the risk factors, doctor recommendations and procedures in this case are based on fact and primary sources. If anyone would like to discuss this with me, please PM me on my bio.

Most of us hope for love and for the happiness of our little ones. I could go for that.  
ElleCC beta's this with great politesse.  
Stephenie owns what I don't.

* * *

**Dollars and Scents**

**Jasper:**  
I'm walking through dust, but it's not, it's powdered glass, finer than sand, and it gets in my mouth and my lungs like smoke, and I feel it in my veins, scurrying like lizards, hardening my blood. My eyes are hard, my fists are hard.

My heart is hard as granite.

Rosalie stands by the side of the road, taller than me, blonder than me, six years older than me, clutching a red guitar between her legs. The strings are broken, and she's screaming, but I only hear silence.

Fear grips my spine, and my sweaty feet slide in my father's boots, spurs clanking on the concrete, but the sun is so hot that the road has melted, liquid volcanic glass, clear tar pulling at my heels, and I fight the way it tugs at my boots. They are too big for my twelve-year-old feet.

Behind me, in the distance, police officers hold barking dogs on short leashes. They're gaining on me, and the saliva and drool sprays from the dogs' jaws as they snarl.

I rip through the curtain that stretches across the road, and the dust rises above the molten glass street, parting around figures clustered just ahead.

The lizards in my bones coil their tails into my marrow and turn my fear into something stronger. They move me in practiced motions, muscle memory driving me forward, fists and feet snapping with heavy precision. The figures swirl away like locusts as hard knuckles connect with their soft flesh and Rosalie screams again, but I can't see her under the boy, only his back as he grunts over the red guitar, buttocks working obscenely in the air. I grab him and he breaks in the middle with a crunching noise under my boot, and I throw him off me, his upper half writhing in the glass dust, but the figures are back, hands full of brown jagged glass.

They swarm me, stinging my back and my arms, but she is safe, the guitar isn't broken. I curl inward as the lizards escape through the wounds in my skin, one by one, taking the courage with them, and I scream at their betrayal.

I fight at the hands that grip my wrists, afraid that if I give into the angel's whisper telling me to open my eyes I'll be blinded by the broken bottles, but she is replaced by the Madonna, and at her sharp slap on my face the world shatters into transparent beads of pale turquoise safety glass.

I blinked up at my mother, gulping at air through my stinging throat. She smoothed the sweaty hair off my face, and stared at me, concern pressing her lips in a hard line.

"Jasper. Did you go to bed stoned again?"

Alice and I shook our heads in unison, and I felt embarrassed and guilty as she wiped her tears on her sleeve. Mom set her palm on my forehead, the way that mothers do, and then checked my cheek with the back of her hand.

"You're not running a fever."

"I'm fine, Mom. Really." I untangled the sheets. "It was just a weird dream."

She stared at me a long time, and I squirmed under her gaze until she stood up. She looked at Alice and back to me.

"I'll be in the kitchen," she said.

I turned to Alice and pulled her close, careful to keep her back flat so I wouldn't hurt her. She looked confused and scared. I wondered what time it was; her pupils were weird and her eyelids were heavy, and by her silence and lethargy I realized I must have woken her from a medicated sleep.

"You were screaming," she whispered. "I couldn't wake you. I called for Esme."

"I'm sorry." I curled around her and stroked her hair.

"You're so strong," she murmured. "Like the sun. I am afraid to know what scares you."

I smiled into her hair, and watched her lashes settled closed.

"Sleep," I whispered.

She nodded, and slid back into stupor with a slow sigh.

I waited a few minutes, listening to her breathe, and then slipped out from the covers.

Mom was at the stove, making hot chocolate, and the smell made me feel like we were back in Texas.

"Evenin', ma'am," I said, laying it on thick. She passed me the mug, and I blew across the surface, watching the ripples in the surface from my breath. She didn't speak, waiting with that infernal silence that Rosalie had, only with a finely honed maternal patience that had me gritting my teeth to keep from spilling my guts with inane confessions of stealing candy when I was five years old.

I searched for the right thing to say, something that would satisfy her and keep me from having to recall the surreal horror of my dream.

"Do you ever talk to anyone from back home?" I asked, staring at the clock on the stove.

"Yes. I hear from Judy and Mrs. Jones once in a while." Her voice was encouraging, knowing I wasn't really inquiring about my father's cousin or our former neighbor.

"Do they ever mention Royce King?"

"Ah."

I met her eyes then, and looked quickly away from their concern and understanding.

"He's still at home, still the same. His mother cares for him." Her voice was remote, flat.

"That's good, I guess."

"Is it?" Mom's whisper cracked like a whip, and heat pricked my face.

"Isn't being a paraplegic enough?" I asked, suddenly furious with her. "He'll never walk, Mom. Would you have had me kill him?"

"I would not wish you to live with that," she said, her voice deliberate and calm. "I don't like what you live with now. But I'm _not_ sorry that he'll never hurt another little girl, and I'm glad that Rose could look at him without fear."

I nodded, comforted by her vehemence.

"Do you regret it?" she asked.

"I regret that he didn't go to jail and get raped on a daily basis."

She said nothing, but her eyes flashed with appreciation.

"I wish I remembered_ doing _it," I said, swallowing against the cocoa, heavy and uncomfortable in my stomach. "I wish I knew if it had been deliberate."

"Would it matter?"

"I don't know." I fiddled with the stitching at the cuffs of my hotel pajamas. "I don't like losing control like that. The adrenaline kicks in, and instinct takes over, and I just go, without thinking. And if I was capable of that when I weighed ninety-nine pounds, what could I do now?"

"You've gotten in fights since then. You were suspended for breaking the principal's son's nose, and you and Edward scrap every once in a while."

She didn't mention the state fair three years ago, when I'd dislocated a creep's shoulder after he'd groped her boob under the guise of handing her a bag of apples. For some reason, that time didn't really bother me much. I'd never had nightmares about it, anyway.

"That's different," I said. "I can keep my head on straight when it's just about me. It's when it's about someone else that I lose it."

She nodded again. It was a conversation we'd had before.

"_The strong must protect the sweet_," I pontificated.

"Who said that one?"

"Homer Simpson."

"Ugh!" She swatted me with the dishtowel. "So now we're jelly donuts?!"

"_Ich bin ein Berliner!"_

"What?!" She felt at my forehead again, and I swatted her hand away.

"JFK. The sentence is correct, but could also technically translate to 'I'm a jelly donut.'"

"You just made that up."

"Nope."

"Well, how about this one: '_I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I make my stand._'"

I thought for a minute. The phrasing was too archaic for Betty Freidan. "Elizabeth Cady whatever-her-last-name-was?"

"Close. Susan B. Anthony. The point is, son, we are not your responsibility."

I stared at the floor, thinking of her words and silver dollars. I felt her eyes on me, dissecting me like I was one of those giant fermented bugs from anatomy class.

"You're carrying too much," she said, as if she was coming to an abrupt decision.

I looked up at her, surprised.

"School, the album, the tour, Alice-" She watched my face as she ticked them off on her fingers. "There's something more, too."

I looked away from her eyes, soft brown irises that were not mine or my sister's.

_Well, Mom, a couple of months ago I found a body in the woods, and I didn't exactly come forward about it because I was buying us a quarter ounce of weed, and I didn't want anyone asking questions that might draw the wrong attention to the band or come nosing around to see what grows next your orchids in the other half of the basement, and I sort of stuck my head in the sand, hoping it would all just go away, but-_

"Could you take over the deliveries?" I blurted out, and wondered where that came from.

"Of course!" she said, surprised. "Dora is practically in remission, and Fred Randall's tour is almost finished, so he'll be back from Afghanistan soon, so that leaves Millie V., and oh."

I looked down into the bottom of my mug, and swirled the chocolate sludge around.

"She got to you, didn't she?" Mom reasoned. "She can be hard to take."

"She was rough on Alice," I told the muddy cocoa.

"Still protecting the sweet?" she teased gently. "Jasper, Millie thinks the world of you, and I know you've enjoyed talking to her. Don't let her push you away just because she is scared. "

I set the cup in the sink next to hers, and said nothing. She sighed.

"You don't have to go, son, and I appreciate all you've done. But you should make peace with Millie, for your own sake, before it's too-"

"I'm going back to bed, Mom." I kissed her cheek and fled to my room, not waiting for her to finish.

I grabbed my iPhone and screwed the ear buds in, and climbed back into bed next to Alice. She reached out to me, warm fingertips on my shoulder. I took her hand and found her toes with mine, and stared into the dark, listening to Zep's "Bring it on Home," ignoring the lyrics and guitar to focus on John Paul Jones's underlying bass, and the way he drove the mood and time changes, shifting from blues to rock seamlessly, giving the others the platform to play. Soothed by the song's playful harmonica and the smell of her hair, herbal and sweet and female on the pillow next to mine, I fell asleep and dreamed of nothing.

**Alice:**  
"Can I borrow your keys?" I asked Edward as he and Seth walked in the door. I didn't know why I called them _his_ keys, the Volvo technically belonged to both of us, Dad's gift when we got our licenses on the same day, left in the garage with a grocery list taped to the windshield, but he did usually drive so Jasper and I could cuddle in the back, and that suited me just fine.

"Should you be carrying that?" he asked, eyeballing my book bag with the library logo on it.

"It's not heavy," I said, pulling it to my chest. It actually held only one book, an unread paperback that wasn't due for another two weeks, but he didn't pry.

"Be back in an hour? I'll need to get Seth back to the diner."

I nodded and bolted out the door before anyone could ask me questions and I would have to lie, not that anyone was paying any attention to me, which was a nice change.

The Volvo was fun to drive, though I had to hold my arms differently to keep from getting sore. I drove too fast, flying west into the afternoon sun, the spring air clear after three days rain. I opened all the windows and turned the heater on my feet, wishing the car was a convertible like Rosalie's, and that I could have picked up Bella on the way. Her easy company and dry humor grounded me when I was at my most disjointed, and today I was not far from chaos. I tried to play music on the stereo, but nothing suited my mood, only jangled my nerves even harder. That was another thing Bella was good at, finding music that fit the moment. Twin was good at that too; the two competed to see who knew more obscure bands and b-side cover songs.

I pulled up to Sue Clearwater's. Her car was gone, but a Volkswagen Rabbit with a trailer hitched to the back blocked the beach access, so I parked near her mailbox. I didn't go to her door, no one would be home and instead I went out toward the ocean. A sole figure walked along the shore, far off to the right, but I turned left and walked along the tree line. The heavy tread of dune buggy wheels striped the damp sand in regular rows down to the water, but showed no break at the little path into the wood.

I stepped into the scrubby pines, and their shadows pressed at my skin more than the chilly air. I took slow steps, eyes trained on the ground, looking for camel tan and dark brown leather along the path, which opened up into a small clearing. My own shoes got heavy with clumping sand and pine needles as I paced the edge of it, but I found nothing, and was about to give up when something small and red caught my eye. I picked it up carefully, cupping it in my palm with a smile, and then froze at a voice calling to another, and the slow buzz of an electric vehicle passing by on the beach. I followed the path back and peeked out of the trees to see a large man in an all-terrain wheelchair, black cowboy hat pushed back on his head, scanning the sand as he drove by. I waited until he was beyond some rock formations and then stepped out into the sand, picking up a curious piece of driftwood and a broken purple whelk shell on the way back toward my car.

"I thought Cullens weren't supposed to come on the Res."

I spun around, nearly dropping my treasures.

Jacob Black stood behind me, fiddling with some car keys. He'd cut his hair, and though his slouching posture was unassuming, he had a presence that was intimidating. It didn't help that he was almost as tall as Emmett, even though he was three years younger.

"Sue said I could collect shells for my art class," I said defensively, feeling like a little kid.

"I'm sure," he said. He'd have a good singing voice if he didn't sound so sour all the time, I thought, biting my cheek to keep the words from coming out of my mouth.

"What is your dad looking for?" I asked, though I had a good guess who told him to go looking.

"He didn't tell me. What do you care?"

"I don't, really," I said, not wanting to seem interested. "The sand is just prettier without the tire tracks."

He nodded, and we both looked out over the water.

"It's lovely here," I said, wanting to say something nice. "If I were to run away and hide from the world, I would come to a place like this, all isolated and wild, and draw everything I see."

"I write songs here, sometimes."

"I like the sound of the wind," I said. "I wish I could play like it."

He smiled and nodded, looking like a kid again. "It's crazy when it storms."

We listened to the breeze singing through the black rocks that spiked out of the sea, and a strange camaraderie grew between us with our appreciation for the wind. There was something very calming about him, like one didn't have to talk to fill spaces. I was downwind of him, though, and tried not to wrinkle my nose at his unwashed teenage boy smell. He needed a mother, if only to teach him about deodorant.

"You should go," he said after a minute, nodding toward his father, who had turned around to make another pass back in our direction. "I don't wanna hear him go on for two hours about your dad. He's pissed at Sue enough."

I nodded and headed back to the Volvo, clutching my collection to my chest.

"Hey, Alice," he called after me. "Here."

He handed me a bleached white disc with a feathery star embossed on the top. It was the largest sand dollar I'd seen, almost bigger than my hand, but light as air in my flat palm.

"Thank you," I said, surprised.

He shrugged.

"Sam and Dad don't choose my friends for me."

Jake Black was a bit of a charmer, I thought, as I sped back to the house, making it with two minutes to spare. He just needed to take a bath.

**Jasper:  
**I dropped the square of paper I'd been folding and stared at the computer screen in surprise.

"What?" Edward squawked, grabbing at the edge of the table.

"Yep, sold out." Santiago grinned into his webcam. "The entire tour. They're trying to see if we can add more dates. That video of yours is something else!"

"Did the show on the military base work out?" Alice asked, recovering quickly.

"I think they're still talking with the stagehand union on that that one, but I'm pretty sure it's a go. We'd really like to have you on board with us on this, guys. We can get another band for the extra dates if you absolutely can't do it, but… "

I bet, I thought. The tour sold out in part due to us, and we all knew it.

"You're already planning on adding the shows?" asked Edward.

"We have to. We need the money. Even just ten extra shows would mean that I don't have to finance my wife's car, and our rent is covered for the year. You guys have no idea how much the label and agents and producers and everyone else rake off the top. It may be rough going to do this totally indie, but you guys will probably walk away this summer with more net cash than we will."

I nodded, not surprised by this.

"We'll have to discuss extra shows with Bella. Would they be added during the already scheduled tour at the same venues, or an extension at the end?" Alice donned her mantle of manager, her light voice becoming crisp and businesslike.

"I don't know yet. Where is Bella, anyway? She's not part of the Partridge family?"

"She's at her house," Edward said. His voice was still hushed, and I could see how hard he was trying to maintain his composure. Emmett was hiding his shock fairly well, considering that he was the biggest skeptic of us all. Rosalie was Rosalie, unfazed by anything.

"You're at Aro's in a few weeks, right? I'll catch up to you there. We'll know more, then."

"We'll have some stuff off the new album," I offered, pleased my voice was even.

"Can't wait to hear it. Are you going to open with the Melissa tune again? I like Alice and Bella on the Meg White tune, better."

"Why?" Edward asked.

"It's good that you show Alice as multi-talented, on guitar as well as harmonica." Santiago's eyes shifted to gaze at her, lower at the screen, the digital image out of synch with his voice. "You all showcase two or more skills, and I think you need to push that, doll. You are entirely too cute in that video, and I'm afraid you're going to get labeled as decorative."

Under the table, Edward slid his hand around Alice's wrist, and behind her, my sister gripped mine. I reached out with my other hand and slid a fingertip down the back of her neck, and her shoulders eased at my touch.

"And Bella and Rosalie?" I asked, a polite smile pasted on my mouth.

"Well, Bella sings and does Edward," the Volturi Guard front man quipped, "and Rosalie plays guitar and breathes."

I took a step backward, placing my heel on Emmett's shoe, and pressed with half my weight.

"You are one lucky drummer, dude," Santiago said, giving him a salute with two fingers from his temple. He leaned forward in the screen and closed the connection.

We all stood there, not saying a word. I watched the pressure build in Alice's skin, and Edward reached into his pocket for his iPhone. Rosalie picked up the half-folded origami from the floor and handed it to me.

"Um. Guys?" Emmett's eyes were focused inward, his math-face showing. "Guys. Ten shows would be like an extra fifty-one thousand dollars. Apiece. Net."

"Believe me now, big brother?" Edward asked him.

Alice squealed and jumped up in the chair, dancing a frenetic little jig and I grabbed her before she toppled over, and spun her around and around, dizzy with her excitement. We crashed into Rosalie and Emmett, who were swallowing each other's faces, and landed in a heap on the floor. We stayed there, laughing, until I looked up at Edward. His hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders were at his ears, but the grin on his face had an edge of loneliness as he bounced in his shoes.

"Oh, Twin! Just go get her," Alice exclaimed, as I picked her up and set her on her feet.

"She's already on her way," he said, and I slapped him on his back as he wandered off to the dining room bar. We waited until she walked in the door to uncork a bottle of champagne that neither Carlisle or Mom said we couldn't have on a school night, not being home, and then they all disappeared for private celebrations, the lucky fuckers.

Alice called her father, one finger in her other ear as the weird triumphant notes of Chevelle's "Letter from a Thief" filled the house. Probably Bella's choice, I thought, as I kissed the delicate ear that housed the finger, but it had a good bass riff. I wrapped my arms around the tiny woman on the phone, burying my face in her hair, the spiky tips catching on my unshaven skin, and finished the paper crane I'd started before Santiago called. I'd made so many I could make them blind, and often did, creasing the paper under my desk at school.

She finished her conversation and turned to kiss me, her mouth flavored with bubbly wine and joy, and I lost myself in her taste and the song until we were both panting, and she pulled away with a groan.

"A week," she whispered.

"I'm going to wear you out," I groaned into her mouth.

She moaned, and my dick throbbed at the noise she made, like Pavlov's drooling dog.

I took her shoulders in my hands and set her away from me, and she laughed up at me and took my hand, and we walked back to my room, grinning like fools.

"How are we supposed to pretend to be normal?" she asked, lying down on the carpet, waving her feet in the air. I shrugged and set the crane on the sole of her foot, and she kept her leg straight, balancing it. I admired the view, and the way her pants curved around her thighs.

"Six hundred and seventy-seven," I said.

"Six hundred and seventy-eight," Alice corrected. "You dropped one. Or do you number them as you make them?"

"When did I drop one?"

"I don't know, the last time you bought from Sam, maybe?" She seemed like she expected me to know what she was talking about.

She sighed and went to her room, coming back with a red paper crane in her palm. It was water stained and crusty with sand. I took it from her and looked at it, curious. It smelled of a strange mix of salt and balsam and seaweed.

"I found it on Third Beach the other day, near Sue's. Well, off in the woods a bit. I'd gone looking for the other shoe, since Charlie took mine and we have to actually have the objects from the still life in order to get full marks for accuracy in our critique, and I worked really hard on the final drawing. But I didn't find the match, only one of your cranes. I thought you usually met Sam off the reservation. Is that why you won't let me come when you guys hook up? Because I'm a Cullen?"

I stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. My elation ebbed into confusion.

"Charlie took your shoe?"

"Well, it wasn't _mine, _exactly. I found it, and Sue said I could keep it. But Bella and I've been best friends since September, and the chief is suddenly all fascinated with my drawings now? I don't think so. But a $900 two-toned Ferragamo wingtip that doesn't belong on anyone in Clallam County, now that's a bit more interesting. So I wasn't all that surprised to see it missing from the art room, especially since Billy Black is going over La Push with a fine-toothed beach comb."

The skin on the back of my neck moved unpleasantly, and my mouth got chalk dry.

"Alice," I tried, and swallowed, and tried again, "can I see your drawing?"

She dashed off again and reappeared with a masonite drawing board with a beige toned piece of textured paper hung from the clips. The illustration was a very precise mixed media layering of graphite pencil, black and white charcoal and colored oil pastel, depicting a glass bottle, a pinecone, a seabird's tail feather and man's brown dress shoe.

My heart pounded in my chest. It was a very good likeness.

"I'm going to have to start all over, and I really liked the weirdness of the man-made prissy shoe with the weathered glass and the natural organic stuff. I suppose I could just ask Charlie about it, but he gets all awkward and his moustache droops, you know?"

I nodded.

"You want to borrow one of my boots?" I asked, amazed that my voice was steady.

"Oooh," she breathed. "Can I use the pink ones? That would be surreal!"

She spun off again, muttering something about driftwood and seashells.

I paced around my room, looking at the walls, trying to find a quote or a phrase to sink my brain into before it exploded. I found nothing, and I grabbed my deerstalker hat instead, pulling the flaps down so my thoughts couldn't go screaming out my ears. I wanted a cigarette.

I looked at the paper crane I hadn't made, idly brushing the sand from its weathered wing with my calloused thumb, and forced myself to think.

* * *

What's your favorite donut?


	15. Decorum

The majority of us prefer simple donuts: simple glazed, powdered and cinnamon cake. When I can find them, I overindulge in maple cream filled.

There's a lot of fuss going on, so just in case, I'm up to date on Twilighted, too.  
ElleCC is fabulous and dashes my commas.  
Stephenie Meyer owns their names. I own the rest, and Sting owns me; especially when he was young and still wore the sweater.

**

* * *

Alice:**  
_Decorative._

The word followed after me like a junior high stalker, catcalling from every mirror, nesting in my closet and smirking from the make-up scattered over my vanity sink.

I smudged the oil pastel in with my fingertip, and then scratched out a line to show a seam in the leather, using the grey paper underneath to show the shadow, and traced in with a black charcoal pencil, lead sharpened to the finest point for the thread. I'd set up my still life so the detail would be in the foreground, centered so that one felt like there was a magnifying lens over the composition, hyper realism detail in focus, details blurring at the edges. The effect was interesting, but the juxtaposition of the fancy boot with the seashells was lost in the prettiness of the picture. I'd get an A from my art teacher, but a D- from myself; it was well executed but tame, and could have graced the walls of any hotel room: decorative.

"Aren't you coming down?" Jasper asked from the doorway between our rooms.

"I should really finish this," I said. "It's due tomorrow. Go ahead without me."

He looked at me awhile, and I turned away from his scrutiny, wondering what he saw in me, this gorgeous golden demi-god in Middle Eastern pajamas with the world on his shoulders. I hated it, the weird tension that gripped us both, ever since Santiago's phone call; but what could he say? I knew where I stood. The band was everything to him, and my part was frivolous, playing at being a manager and insinuating myself into songs with a self-indulgent harmonica solo that bridged a chorus, and they let me, out of pity, so that I wasn't left behind.

I heard a masculine sigh and the closing door.

Any traces of artistic momentum ground to a pathetic halt, and I wondered if I should just give up on the still life and go join them downstairs, but something stubborn kept me at it. I wanted more out of the drawing, I realized. The pink boots were rather uninspiring unless Jazz was in them and the first composition had a hint of the surreal because of the strange expensive shoe's mystery. The previous drawing process had been exciting and interesting, and the fact that I was bored with the current subject material showed.

Rosalie walked into my room, and flopped down on my bed, her acoustic slung on her back, the tuning pegs tangled in her hair. She tossed a plum at me, skin as black as patent leather with a dusting of lavender. I contemplated adding it to the tableau, but it was ripe to the point of denting under my fingertips, and it would be squishy tomorrow. I cupped it in my palm, feeling like a dark Eve, and wondered why Eve was always painted as a blonde in classical art.

"Why aren't you downstairs?" I asked her. "They need you."

She ignored me.

"Rose, I have to get this done. The critique is tomorrow."

She leaned over, long body turned at an impossible angle to look at my drawing. She sniffed and turned back, unthreading her hair from the head of her guitar.

"Look, just go," I said, frustration finally boiling over. "You're working on 'Bed's Too Big Without You,' right? Edward can double back on the bridge to coda the ending. It'll make it all emo and slick sounding, and that's what you would have done if you worked on it in February, while I was out of it on the couch. Jasper said you guys got a lot done and it was good work. You don't need me."

"Jasper lied," she said, and pointed at the piece of fruit and gestured to my face.

I took an obedient bite, and sucked at the juice that dripped from the yellow flesh.

"What do you mean, 'he lied?'" I asked with my mouth full. "Why would he tell me-"

"Would you please leave that poor drawing alone before you screw it up royally and have to start completely over?" Edward walked in, slowly spinning a reluctant Bella onto my dance floor. "And get over your pity party while you are at it."

"Why, so I can be a _decorative_?" I snarked at him. He was right, I was sulking, but I didn't care.

"Well, Edward might look _almost_ as good as you in a dress," said Emmett from the doorway, cradling a djumbe drum in his hands. "But he can't hit a high A without going falsetto, and we're just not that kind of band."

"I can't hit a high A either," Bella said.

The connecting door slammed open, Japer's fist immediately following with my biggest harmonica. He tossed it in my lap, and dragged his upright into my room, digging a groove in the carpet with the peg.

"_If Mohammed won't come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed_," he said, not looking at me.

He nodded to Emmett, who settled on the floor and slapped the drumhead, finding an easy reggae rhythm. He thumbed on the bass, Sting's distinct bottom notes running through the floor and up in my spine.

I closed the box on the pastels, and finished the plum, licking my fingers, lingering on my thumb when I felt my boyfriend's stare, refusing to look at him.

We took the song twice, switching around Bella and Edward trading lines, and were about to start again with another variation on the final chorus, but Dad cleared his throat from the hallway to get our attention. He looked exhausted.

"Could you maybe take it downstairs?" he asked.

Edward nodded and grabbed Bella's hand. "That's a good idea, I want to write down a hook before I lose it."

"And put some words with it, will you?" Jazz called out after them, lugging his bass back to his room.

Emmett and Rosalie followed them out, and Dad stepped in and nodded politely to my drawing.

"Jasper, your mother is in the sunroom, she needs to talk to you," he said, through the door between our rooms.

I followed them, worried by Dad's somber tone.

Esme was sitting on her loveseat, hands balled around tissues, her face pale and blotchy.

"Jazz, I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"Millie?" Jasper asked.

"No," she said, surprise making her face go blank for a moment. She shook her head. "Dora."

We both stared at her for a moment, and then Jasper shook his head.

"But she's in remission! She kicked it!"

"Chemotherapy can cause cardiotoxicity. Mrs. Gustavo had a history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, and-" At Jasper's glare, Dad simplified. "She had a heart attack, son. She died in her sleep last night."

"You have to be kidding me! She made it through the cancer, only to have the cure kill her?" My boyfriend turned back to his mother, face red with rage. "What was the point?"

"Jasper, I would appreciate it if you did not shout at my wife." Dad's quiet voice was stone cold.

"Carlisle, it's okay," Esme said, wiping her face.

Both men turned to her, and then looked at the other. There was an odd battle of egos, each waiting for the other to comfort the woman on the couch. They were the same height, one with silver and platinum hair, and the other gold. _They are the moon and the sun,_ I thought, and I wondered which would eclipse the other.

"No, it's not," Jasper said. "I'm sorry, Mom." He nodded once to Carlisle, and my father sat down and put his arms around her.

I stepped in the room then, and slid my arm around his waist, and tugged him out the door. I led him to his room, and he sat on his bed and pulled me into his lap, and held me so tightly to his chest I could feel the closures from his pajamas pressing into my skin. I listened to his heartbeat for a long time, wishing he would let me hold _him_, not the other way around.

"Thank you," he whispered after a while, "for being so brave."

I nodded into his warmth, suddenly proud of every stitch and every scar, the decorations that gave him comfort.

**Jasper:**  
_She looks like a plastic doll,_ I thought to myself.

Athenodora Gustavo, 68, twice-widowed, retired school teacher, lay on satin pillows in the shiny pinewood box, her waxy skin blushing with a color she never had living. Eyebrows had been painted on her face with infinite care, the realistic russet brushstrokes so very different than the bold orange lines she penciled on herself. At least they got the wig right, though the style was different; the bun in the back was higher, to keep the head balanced on the cushion properly, I guessed. She was wearing a pink dress and a tiny gold cross on her neck that I remembered her wearing, and I fixed my eyes on it, calmed that there was _something_ of her that seemed right.

She looked nothing like the body in the woods, and I wasn't sure which was more horrifying.

I clasped my hands in front of me, wishing Alice hadn't gone ahead to socialize in that weird way one does at visitations, talking in intimate tones with people one hardly knew. Things were off between us, odd tension abrasive, but I still wanted her near with a desperation that irritated me.

"_From my rotting body, flowers may grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity_." I murmured Edvard Munch's words, ones I had found in a book last night, knowing I would want to say some kind of a farewell to Dora.

"You think anything is going to grow out of _that_?" a sardonic voice muttered behind me. "She's been laminated and pumped so full of latex it'll be an eternity before she rots."

I looked at Millie in shock, offended by her tone but agreeing with her words.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Paying my respects." She shuffled up to the coffin, and I stepped aside a little. She was wearing a black bandana on her head, tied like a gypsy's scarf low on her forehead, her one conform to funeral clothing.

"Lucky old bat," Millie eulogized with a bowed head. She turned away and took my offered elbow, and we walked slowly to the back of the church. I felt my mom watching from a corner where she chatted with Mrs. Gustavo's mah jong friends.

"You knew her?" I asked.

"She taught me to read. I had her for first grade. Twice."

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye as we settled into the last pew. "You flunked first grade?"

"I had behavioral issues," she said shrugging.

"You?" I asked, grinning through my sarcasm.

She smirked at me, and we watched the people mill around, doing a clockwork dance to the tune of the faint organ music that was piped low over the speakers.

"I hate this," Millie said after a minute, gesturing with her nose to the people gathered.

"What part?" I asked.

"All of it. Everything is pretty. Death isn't pretty. You shit yourself and stink. All this expense isn't for her; she doesn't care. There's not one bit of Mrs. G. left in that plastic corpse. You want to honor her memory? Read a book to a kid. This is all for themselves, so they can say nice things and not be afraid to die. People can say, 'Oh, look how peaceful she is,' and not feel guilty for still being alive."

I took a deep breath, trying to keep my anger in check. I didn't come here for this.

"So what do you want?" I asked, because I felt like she wanted me to.

"To be burnt. Let the quacks take what they can use, and burn the rest. Maybe have someone who cares throw the ashes somewhere nice." She shrugged.

Alice walked up the aisle, eyeing Millie warily. She was dressed in a black clingy dress thing that ballet dancers wear, with the swingy skirt that flared when she twirled, and olive green tights that matched a ribbon around her neck. A white jade rabbit nestled in the hollow of her collarbones, suspended on the ribbon. I'd given it to her for Christmas last year. She looked sophisticated and sleek and I felt guilty for noticing how sexy she was at a fucking funeral, but apparently my dick had no morals of its own.

"Still hoping to outwit the grim reaper, Miss Cullen?" the older woman beside me asked.

My girlfriend didn't speak; she reached into her little black bag and pulled out a small gold tube. She slowly coated her mouth with dark red gloss and then mashed her lips together, looking at Millie V. the whole time.

I squirmed in my seat.

Alice held the lipstick out, wordlessly offering it to Millie, and at her refusal, shrugged and put it back in her bag. She walked on, hips swinging, and as she left, Reverend Weber's church seemed to grow colder inside.

"She's got style, that girl of yours," Millie said.

"Yes." She also had a fascinating arch to her spine from her strappy high heels, and I wanted to follow it with my fingertips until it disappeared into the cheeks of her-

Mom caught my eye and asked a question with her eyebrows and when I nodded that everything was okay, she moved toward us. As she sat to chat with Millie, I slid from the other side of the pew and jammed my fists into the pockets of my dress pants, hoping to hide my blasphemous erection. I headed out to the little parking lot, wishing we hadn't ridden in with Mom and Carlisle.

Alice was leaning against the minivan, rocking backward on her heels, swinging the tiny sparkly purse from its strap, never quite still, even in solitude. She saw me and lifted her chin in defiance, and something dark in my bones responded to the sinful red candy coating on her mouth. Everything in me wanted her, my hands were desperate for her, my heart, my tongue, my skin. I walked to her, footsteps hard; even my black boots wanted to fuck her fancy shoes.

"Run away with me," I whispered, rubbing my thumb over her lips, wiping off some of the glittery lipstick.

"Where?" she asked, but I stole her words, taking her mouth hard, wishing I could steal her soul and give her mine. Her lips were sweet and sticky and added to the strangeness and the decadence of making out at a church.

"Nepal," I said against her mouth, catching her lower lip between my teeth. "Brazil."

"Take me anywhere," she whispered, licking my tongue, tiny teases of wet words. "Take me right here."

I groaned at her taste, and the way she wriggled against me, but at the frustration, too. We weren't going anyplace, and I couldn't have her.

"Stop." I pushed her away.

"No," she whimpered, grabbing my tie to keep my head bent to her. "I don't care."

"I do. We've waited three months. I'm not going to mess you up inside just because I can't wait one more day."

"I'm _fine_, Jasper."

"And when your doctor agrees," I said, leaning in to breathe words into her ear, knowing it would make her shiver, my revenge for the lipstick, the sexy ribbon at her neck, her hot hands flat on my chest, heat seeping through my dress shirt to sear my skin, "I'm going to take you in every position your body can bend, for so deep and so long, you're going to forget your own name."

She moaned, and I promptly forgot my own at the sound, but then she sighed and nodded.

"This is so hard," she said, with a rueful pout.

"No," I said, grinning and grabbing her hand, squeezing her palm around the stiffness in my pants, "_this_ is so hard."

The church doors opened, and I heard my mother saying goodbye to someone, voice sweet with insincere regret that they had to get us back to school. I stepped back to a chaste distance.

"Thank you for coming," Carlisle murmured to me as we held the doors open. "It meant a lot to Esme."

"Of course," I said, pleased that he said something, and annoyed that he felt he had to.

They dropped us off in front of the school, and at the steps, Alice loosened my tie and unbuttoned my collar. We were overdressed, but I didn't mind if she was going to look like that; I loved walking next to her, knowing every guy in school wanted to be in my boots, holding hands with this girl.

**Alice:**  
"Kid, you're sliding backwards," protested my brother. "Up here. B flat. You_ know_ this one."

"Sorry," Seth said, for the fourth time today.

Bella and I grinned and pretended to do our chemistry homework.

"How was the funeral?" she asked me.

"Fine. Weird. Mostly old ladies."

"Oh." Bella wrinkled her nose.

"No, they were the fun kind, the ones who play cards while wearing plastic visors and drinking lemonade that's been spiked with gin."

"Bunko," Jasper said. "They play bunko on Sundays." He had changed into jeans when we got home from school, but left on the button down and tie. His hair was pulled back, tied with a bit of leather lacing that he probably stole from one of Emmett's drums. He wasn't doing the assignment either, just staring off into space, idly spinning the red crane I'd found in the woods. I wondered what he was thinking, with his face all intense, like some dark harmony was writing itself behind his eyelids.

"Dude, what is wrong with you today?" Edward's frustration rang out through the house.

"My stomach hurts. We had pizza today at lunch."

"Oh." My brother's voice softened with sympathy. "I'm sorry, man. Grade school pizza sucks. Do you want to quit?"

I heard no negative reply, but Seth started the tune again, and this time made it through the entire piece without faltering.

"I'm going to be like that when I'm old," Bella said. "I'm going to carry a purse with handles and smack people with it when they are in my way, and pinch cute boys on the butt, and everyone will let me get away with it, because I'm old and allowed to be crazy."

I laughed at her, delighted. "I can't wait. You know what you can do when you are old? You can fart. In public. You can't fart when you are a kid - everyone will always remember it. You'll be at your twentieth high school reunion, and you'll meet that one girl, and remember her as the one who farted in class in second grade. You won't even know her name, but she'll never get past that stigma.

"But when you are old, you can. I can totally see it. You, me and Rosalie will be at some potluck luncheon, sixty years from now, all blue-haired and in pearls, and you'll let a little one slip and be all sweet and blushing about it, and whisper something like, 'I do fluff a bit when I eat meat, but I love it so,' all cute and Persian cat-like, and still managing to sling some double entendre in there, but you'll say it so innocently that no one will believe that you are being filthy."

She giggled, red-faced. Jasper snorted.

"I, on the other hand, will be all crude about it and lift my leg, and lay a stink egg so big it will clear the room, and then I'll then yell out, 'My god, Jessica! What the hell did you put in that casserole, condensed brussels sprouts? Are you trying to kill us all?! Someone find me a wet wipe, I think I sharted on my Chanel.' I'm sure I'll be quite tipsy, too, even though it's only one-o'clock in the afternoon.

"But Rosalie will own us all. Rose will be one of the supersonic farters, and rip out one that shakes the windows and stops all conversation, and she'll just raise one white eyebrow, and say in an utterly deadpan voice, 'Were you expecting violins?'"

Bella laughed so hard I thought she would choke, and I passed her my glass of Coke and told her to breathe, which made her laugh even harder. Jasper was laughing too, his eyes clear as sky, and it made my heart sing to see him finally smiling.

Seth finished the next pieces without error, and Twin congratulated him on his practice. They walked through, Edward tossing his keys from palm to palm.

"Hang on, Seth," Jasper called. "I want to ask you something." He headed out of the dining room, the red crane still in his fingertips.

"I should catch a ride with them. Dad will be home for dinner for once." Bella gathered up her books, and gave me a hug. "Good luck tomorrow. This is the last one, right? All put back together?"

I nodded. "I sure as hell hope so."

We walked into the kitchen, just in time to see Seth projectile vomit all over Emmett.

My big brother stared at the boy in shock, and his face turned a weird shade of pale green. He slowly looked down at his clothes and then back up. The corners of his mouth turned down in horror.

Bella and I watched his throat convulse, and she moved very quickly when I pointed to the back door. She managed to get it open in time for Emmett to hurl his own stomach contents all over Esme's stepping stones.

Jasper stared with wide eyes at Seth, who blinked, and wiped his hand across his mouth.

"What did _he_ have for lunch?" Seth asked, dazed.

"Pizza," said Edward, trying not to laugh.

"So it's not much better in high school, huh?" the boy asked.

Emmett gagged, and heaved again.

* * *

Where would you run to?


	16. Interlude at Eighteen

Most of us would run away to natural setting, beaches and mountains and forests, though a few would get lost in New York City. I'd go where there was water.  
Because my question was a bit vague, several of you mentioned that you would prefer to run to the commode rather than yack out the back door like Emmett.

ElleCC saved me from serious ficgaffe on this one. Thank you, lady.  
Stephenie owns what I don't. And everyone should own "Quarter Tank of Gasoline" by Bloodkin, because, well, guh. Seriously.

**

* * *

Jasper:**

I don't realize how warm I am until I'm not anymore, and the perfect smell of sheets and herbal shampoo and sugar swirls away into disappointment, and I'm eleven years old and mooning the neighbor lady, except I'm holding a pillow in protest, which means I'm getting pantsed in bed, and my girlfriend is spanking my ass, counting as she goes.

I arose to the occasion, because her hands were warm and I kind of liked the attention, and it was morning after all; but the eighteenth slap woke me fully, and the "one to grow on" was hard enough to make me flip over in self-protection.

"Oooh," said Alice, smiling at my morning wood. "Good morning. Happy Birthday! Esme said last night to let you sleep as long as possible, but Dad is getting fidgety and has asked me twice if you are up yet. We have to leave in less than an hour, and I have to get ready. I wish I could have slept in more, and I know I'll be too hyper to sleep in the car. It took me forever to fall asleep last night, and it's butt-o'clock early in the morning, so I think I've slept for an hour, and now all I can think about is how hungry I am. I can't even have coffee, but I brought you some."

She handed me a hot mug as I sat half up, and then slid her hands around my shaft, squeezing upward. I blinked, thinking that this was not such a bad way to start legal adulthood. She leaned over and settled her mouth down over me, warm and wet, and I fought every urge to thrust upward into her mouth.

"Alice," I growled in frustration, "Stop."

She pulled away, but kept working her hands. "It's your birthday, Jazz. Can't I give you a present?"

I glared at her, but my dick was more awake than my conscience, and when I didn't immediately say no, she smiled and licked her lips, and lowered her face back into my lap, and the moist heat of her mouth engulfed me again.

I groaned, but more in enjoyment than in protest, and set the coffee cup down before I scalded us both. Her mouth was incredible, soft suction pulling at me, and her hands were everywhere, light feathery fingertips petting my skin, and I gave in, tired of turning away something I wanted so much.

She knew it, too, when I finally gave up and gave over to her will, one of her hands sliding up my chest, palm flat over my heart, fingers splayed out, and I covered her hand, trapping her fingers between mine. She squeezed my fingers and my cock and sucked me deep, and I gasped, and tried not to shove deeper. I wanted to move, to penetrate, to thrust; but I kept my hips still while she moved over me and it was wrong and one-sided and wonderful, the pressure and the warmth of her tongue on the underside of the head, and I was so swollen, iron hard and tight in my own skin. I groaned a warning and she pulled away, covering me as I released into her hands, her hot palms catching each spasm.

"Happy Birthday," she giggled, spinning off the bed to the bathroom. A second later I heard the shower start. I smiled stupidly at nothing as my heartbeat slowed to normal, a little embarrassed with myself at how quickly I'd finished, but it was morning.

I sipped at the coffee, deciding that now would be a good time to get some breakfast so I wouldn't be eating in front of her when she couldn't. I finished my coffee and headed for the kitchen.

I didn't know what I was expecting on my eighteenth birthday, but there was no fanfare – aside from my girlfriend blowing my trumpet this morning – no piles of presents on the table, no cards stuck on the fridge with my name, and Mom wasn't even up to fuss over me.

This was really Alice's day though, and it was better that everything was low key until we were sure she was fine. I was riding into Seattle with them in order to help with the driving since Carlisle just got off a twelve-hour shift, with no time to sleep before making the drive. I would get to spend a few hours knocking around the city by myself, to look for a few books I wouldn't find in Port Angeles, hit the guitar shop, and get something I'd wanted for a while.

"Hey, Jasper," Carlisle said casually, walking in as I finished my toast. "Do you mind if I give Garrett one of the EPs?"

"No," I said, curious why he was asking. He'd fronted the money for their production. He could have as many as he wanted.

"Could you run down and get one for me?"

"I've some in my room." I came back with two; maybe I'd give one to the nurse in the maternity ward if she was there. My stepfather looked annoyed with something when I got back, and Alice was giggling at him. I wondered what I'd missed, and guessed she had been teasing him about his non-existent coffee making skills.

I dressed in old jeans and a black dress shirt with French cuffs, and left them undone and rolled down, covering my hands to my knuckles. My black boots with the rounded toes were the most comfortable for walking, so I shoved my feet into them after grabbing two socks that didn't match in color – at least they were the same thickness.

I checked the mirror on the closet door, but I looked no older than yesterday. I was still a boy, bones proportioned too long, though my chest was broader than Edward's, and that was okay since the bastard had two inches on me. My coloring come from my father, but my face was of the Platt side of the family: straight angled brows over a blunt nose – obviously broken long ago, a fight in third grade – a fleshy bottom lip and a strong chin. I looked okay, I guessed; girls noticed me, and that was nice.

I drew two hands from my hips and shot myself in the mirror, six shooter fingers blazing, and Alice chuckled from the doorway.

"What are you going to do today, cowboy?" she asked.

"Wander around," I hedged. "I might hit a bookstore and maybe check out Emerald City. I saw online they have one of Les Paul's own basses. I doubt they'll let me play it, but I'd just like to see it up close." I'd check out their demo stick bass, too, just to see if I'd have the nerve to ever order one. I really wanted an NS stick – you could do just about anything on one: pluck, strum, even tap the strings like piano keys – but I couldn't justify blowing so much money on a new toy. Maybe if the summer went as well as Emmett thought, I would buy one when we got back from the tour.

We piled into Carlisle's sedan, and were almost out of the driveway when Alice fussed about leaving her favorite blue sweater in the basement.

"Honey, we can't be late," her father cautioned.

"I'll get it," I offered.

Carlisle sighed as I dashed into the house, but I was back in no time.

"You left it in your room," I said handing it to her. Both her dad and she were laughing at something. It was nice to see them both relaxed; this last operation was cosmetic more than structural, and she was only going to be under mild anesthesia for an hour or so.

The four-hour trip seemed much shorter than it had last time, even with Carlisle playing his gawd-awful swing ballroom playlist. One song, "It Ain't You" by the Squirrel Nut Zippers, got under my skin, good rubbery bass and catchy tune, but Alice punched my arm and shook her head at me as I drifted into the melody, hearing her harmonica take over the horns.

"Don't you dare," she whispered in my ear, but I felt her breath on my skin more than I heard her words.

At the main building of the hospital I kissed her and wished her good luck, and she told me to have fun, and I drove off into the city as it began to rain through the late morning sun.

**Alice:**  
I woke up cold and hungry, irritated with flimsy hospital clothes that didn't close properly and machines that blipped and oxygen tubes under my nose and undercurrents of soothing tones and just plain modern medicine in general. I had a suspicion that under the light haze of drugs, I had a caffeine headache of Hammer of Thor proportions, and if I didn't eat something soon, I was going to snack on a nurse, preferably the blond one with the nose ring who was almost as short as me. Her white nursey shoes were actually cute. I wondered if they would fit me. I would try them on after I gnawed on her calves a bit.

I lifted the blanket and peeked down the hospital gown. I had bandages over the tips of my breasts, molded white gauze pasties held on with clear tape, and lower down, an inch and a half long scar with eight little stitches, the black threads almost blending in with my dark hair. I touched the sutures, but I was still a little numb from the Novocain and felt nothing except a bit of pressure. I frowned at the tangle of curls; I needed some serious grooming.

"How are you feeling, Alice?"

Dad and his college buddy, Dr. I-introduced-your-father-to-your-mother Garrett, walked into the room, grinning at me.

"I'm fine," I said, annoyed that I had been caught looking. "I'm starving and I need coffee."

They both chuckled, and Dad said something out the door in his best flirt-with-a-nurse voice. I rolled my eyes and Garrett laughed so hard he held his stomach, but thirty seconds later, Dad passed me a vending machine cinnamon bun and a styro cup of machine cappuccino, looking smug.

"You should see Edward," I told Garrett. "He's even _worse_. When can I go home?"

"Well, technically I think you have to be released to an orderly who wheels you out," Dad said, "but Jasper's wandered off somewhere, and I need to talk to the chief of staff before we leave. Why don't you get dressed and see how you feel?"

They left, talking about some prank they pulled in a morgue, and I got back into my clothes and snarfed down the cinnamon roll. The cappuccino was too sweet and tasted artificial and gross, but there was a coffee kiosk somewhere, and I'd put money on Jasper knowing how to find it.

**Where r you?** I texted him.

He replied instantly. **Ped unit. Much better posters. How are you? **

**Fine. Starving. Ready to make like a stoner and blow this joint. Need coffee. How do I find you?**

**Follow the purple arrows. Love you hungry lady.**

The nurse checked me, and then Dad and Garrett discussed when the bandages could come off and the stitches could come out, and mentioned "no heavy activity for a couple of days," so I wouldn't pop the sutures, and I pasted an innocent smile on my face and nodded, though inwardly I was groaning because I didn't want to see the look on Jasper's face when I told him we had to wait even another minute to have sex, even though the nice gyno with the _very_ cold gloves said I was fine for "intimacy" in the pre-op exam. I was quite pleased with myself for not shouting at her that I'd had over three and a half months of "intimacy," and I was ready to get plowed like a pay-by-the-hour hooker at a truck stop, but she was a nice lady and I didn't want to offend.

The nurses fussed so much about me walking out that I told them to just wheel me to the pediatric wing and leave me with Jasper, and that made them somewhat happier. An orderly bigger than Emmett, with ebony skin and a shaved head, pushed the chair, and we discussed coffee like wine connoisseurs and he pointed out the directions to the coffee kiosk as we followed the lavender arrows. I spotted a head with a mess of gold hair in the play area of the waiting room, and the orderly shook my hand, folded the chair up and left.

Jasper was sitting on the bright colored rug with his back to me, and assembled all around him were five kids and three tired looking parents. His hair was damp, and I wanted to run my fingers through the tight curls; he must have been walking in the rain.

"I don't know," he said to a little girl. "Maybe he has stripes on his hat because he wishes he was a stripy cat."

"Shhh," whispered a mother. "Let him read."

Jasper read the book, occasionally stopping to let a child fill in a repeating phrase, and my heart wanted to explode in my chest. The thought rose, unasked and unwelcome, of little toddlers with blond ringlets and baby blue eyes-

"That sad girl is staring at you," said the oldest child. She pointed at me, and a pink hospital bracelet slid up her arm.

I wanted to hide from her brutal honesty and the curiosity in all their eyes, but my boyfriend just smiled at me and reached out a hand. I brushed his fingers with mine and sat behind him in one of the upholstered chairs. He finished the story and the kids begged for another, but he said goodbye to them and pulled me to my feet.

"So why are you a sad girl?" he asked, as we walked down the hall.

I swallowed, and tried to find thoughts, words, a voice. "Jazz, do you want kids?" I whispered.

"Yes," he said. "Tons of them."

I nodded, my mouth dry again. I felt like the universe had shifted sideways, and everything I thought I knew had been upended. I wondered if this was how renaissance people felt when the discovered the earth was round, not flat, and if I would be able to handle the crushing sadness that was overwhelming me better if I wasn't bottoming out from hunger and low blood sugar.

"I want all the left ones. Especially the boys," he continued.

"What are left ones?" I asked through the tears in my throat.

"Orphans. They need fathers. I want to give them whiskey flasks and buy them condoms."

My world righted itself abruptly, and then glowed with Technicolor neon. I swallowed again, this time against the hysteria threatening to bubble out of my brain.

"I think there is more to parenting than that," I said.

"Yes. You have to burp them."

I started to giggle, and then the tears came too, and he wrapped his arms around me and let me laugh and cry into his shirt until Dad found us. They hustled me through the hallways, out to the car, and then they stopped at a drive through, and I ate the fries so quickly that I almost bit my own fingers.

"Did you get to see your guitar?" I asked through the burger.

He nodded, and smiled, and the tips of his ears turned pink. "They let me play it. The owner recognized me from the video."

"So you're famous now! What was it like?"

"Heavy! But it sounded so huge and fat. You would not believe how deep it played."

"I meant being recognized!"

"Oh. Weird." He looked away, but couldn't keep the smile out of his eyes. "Kind of neat not to be treated like a kid."

"What else did you do?"

"I went to a couple of places," he said, and reached up into the passenger seat for a bag. "I got you something."

He pulled three books from the bag, and handed me one, Robert Sabuda's _Alice in Wonderland_ pop-up book. I hugged it to my chest and thanked him and chastised him for buying me something on his own birthday. He shrugged, and started to slip the others back into the bag, but I stopped him. The one on top was a translation of Musashi's _The Book of Five Rings_, with beautiful woodcut illustrations, and the other was _Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Dummies_.

I looked at him, shocked. He shrugged.

"I think maybe Seth has it," he said, his voice low under Dad's obnoxious dance music.

"Shouldn't Sue or a doctor be the one to decide that?"

"Yeah, definitely. But it wouldn't hurt to read about it." He looked away, obviously uncomfortable, and I unbuckled and slid into his lap. He pulled me against his chest and cinched his seatbelt around both of us, and tucked my head under his chin.

"Might help _me_, too," he murmured after a while. I nodded, and he held me, and I listened to his heartbeat for miles. My legs got chilly, and I covered them with my sweater and kicked off my shoes underneath. He helped me pull it around my thighs, and then slipped his hand underneath, slowly moving downward across my stomach, and cupped me between my thighs.

"How do you feel?" he breathed in my ear.

I took a slow deep breath, and held very still while he drew his hand back up, my eyes glued to the back of my father's head. That was the first time his hand had been there for months, and my body reacted instantly, and we were in my dad's car like a pair of junior high kids on a date. I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear it.

"Fine," I whispered. "Back to normal. We have to be careful with the stitches."

"Of course," he said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice at my regret.

"And here?" he asked, brushing the side of a breast with his thumb.

"Fine. I woke up with the bandages on, so I never got to see what I look like. It's weird to think that I have tattoos, and I have no idea what it feels like to get one."

"It hurts," he murmured. "It starts out like a cat scratch, but deep and deliberate, and it stings until you remember to breathe. Then it turns into pressure, and where the skin is thin over bone it's sharp and cold like a knife, but on muscle, it's hot like a burn."

I held very still, and my heart slammed against my chest.

He reached around me and pulled back his left cuff. Circling his wrist were weird letters, bluish black rune-like strokes that made me think of Tolkien's elvish script or an Arabic font. The lines were faintly red on the edges, his skin angry with the invasion of ink. As I looked closer, the letters took shape, and I recognized the odd backwards handwriting I had studied in my drawing class last year.

_**icniV ad odranoeL- .dnim sih egnahc ton seod rats a ot dexif si ohw eH**_

"Jasper," I whispered, and turned up to look him. He looked down into my eyes, electric blue lightning impaling me, and I wanted to kiss him so badly I couldn't breathe properly. His gaze slid to my mouth, and he licked his bottom lip. Then he exhaled hard, and pulled me back into his chest and held me tight the whole way home.

**Jasper:**  
She liked it.

In fact, guessing by the tension running through her little body pressed tight to me and the ragged way she was breathing, she liked it a lot.

It itched like crazy.

I reached into my pocket for the little tube of ointment the tattoo artist had given me, and Alice took it from my hand. She squeezed a little onto her fingertip, and then smoothed it over the lines, tracing the letters like Braille, and it soothed the scrambled nerves but made my brain scream with the foreign intimacy of it.

The day was only half over and I was twisting in the emotional charge that surged through every action I chose, each step I took, everything I touched.

I'd parked downtown and walked in the drizzle, listening to Bloodkin's "Quarter Tank of Gasoline," moody Crazy-Horse blues that I could easily feel on _Tropic of Virgo_'sdarker tracks, and it hit me hard, that we were creating something that would make people _feel_. Somewhere in some other city, some kid might be walking down the street in the rain, listening to one of our songs, wondering what it meant to finally be eighteen years old and a man.

The girl running the counter at the shop had carded me, but she was very flirty and it made me uncomfortable. I was rarely alone outside Forks, where everyone knew I was with Alice, the gossip about our family making us legend. I felt vulnerable and had sudden insight to the advantages of wearing a ring on the left hand, and _that_ made me feel strange too.

Alice nestled in and lay still in my arms for the rest of the ride home and I wondered, as always, about what she dreamed.

When we got to the house, Carlisle headed off to catch some sleep before Mom came home for dinner. Everyone else was at home; I could feel Emmett's drumming through the garage floor, and Bella's raincoat hung in the foyer and Edward's door was closed. Rosalie was in the kitchen and gave us a nose nod as we walked in.

Alice shook her head at her slightly.

"You left the booth light on," my sister said to me, jerking her head at the basement door.

"Edward was the last one down there," I retorted. "He can turn it off."

Rose rolled her eyes at Alice, who giggled.

"Jazz got a tattoo and played one of Les Paul's Gibsons, today," she said. "You can ask him about it, but it's going to have to wait because I've been cleared for intimacy but barred from heavy activity, which I'm assuming means I can finally get felt up, and that needs to happen _now_, and then I'm going to sleep for a hundred years. Tomorrow I will need a gallon of coffee."

I took her to my room and she kissed me, open mouthed and urgent. Then she broke away from the kiss and stepped back, looking up at me, and the uncertainty in her face cut me.

"Get in the bed," I told her, toeing my boots off.

She crossed her arms over her torso and started to bunch the cloth in her fists.

"No," I said. "Leave it on."

She dropped her hands. "Why? I'm wearing a cami, the one you like with the lace-"

I pulled her to the bed with my hands on her hips, careful not to bump her breasts.

"Alice, if I see much more of you right now, I will _fuck_ you." My voice sounded rough and raw, my longing amplified by hers. I pulled her against me, her back to my chest, the way we were in the car, but she was higher on my lap, pretty legs splayed wide over mine, with her ass wedged nicely over my erection. "It wouldn't be slow and gentle, or _intimate_, and it would most definitely be _heavy activity_."

I reached under the layers of her dress, and cupped her as I had before, the thin layer of lace underwear no barrier from her heat and her wet.

"So if you want to be properly felt up," I whispered in her ear, pressing my fingertips in a slow circle, "you'll keep your clothes on."

She bucked against my hand, soft weight squirming on my groin, and she whimpered and whispered my name, a plea for more. I slipped my hand under the lace, avoiding the little stitches at the top of her curls, and slid two fingers into her folds. She was already slick and swollen, and I worked my fingers up high, rolling the little nub in time to the rhythm of her hips grinding against my cock.

"In," she moaned, head thrown back, lips against my neck, and when I pushed two fingers inside her, she squeezed, and I nearly lost all control.

I tore at the buttons of my jeans to free my dick from the denim that was threatening to rub me raw, and she arched her back.

"Fuck, Alice," I breathed, shoving my hips against her. "You don't know how much I want to be _in_."

I curled my fingers and pressed with the heel of my palm, and she rode my hand while I rode her ass, and she was making fantastic noises and my swollen cock was utterly bewildered that it wasn't balls deep in the warmth clenching around my hand and it was ridiculous how fast just touching her got me right _there_-

"Jasper, please," she gasped, body tensing in my arms, satin wet flesh sucking at my fingers, "now-"

-and I groaned, mind and body exploding with how wet and soft she was, and she made that noise as she came, that cry of completion that was all mine, and I went with her, erupting all over my shirt tails.

I held her while her breathing calmed, and slowly pulled my hand away.

"Do I feel okay?" she whispered.

I started to laugh, and she turned around to glare at me but then giggled at my black shirt that was covered in white spooge. I took her hand and placed it where mine had been.

"You tell me," I said, trying not to get too interested as she explored. I cleaned up in the bathroom, and she was fast asleep by the time I got out.

I walked to the kitchen, and Rose gave me a once over and snorted at my change of clothes. I flipped her off, only half in jest; couldn't she break her damned stoicism even to wish her little brother "happy birthday"? Then I wondered what she was making in the oven and thought I might have to eat crow for my pisstivity if she was making a cake, but she pulled out a pan of lasagna and poked at the cheese.

Gritting my teeth, I stalked to the basement, slamming the door behind me, not caring that I was being an immature asshole. My entire fucking family and two best friends – and even Bella, who was a girl and supposed to remember bullshit like that – had forgotten what day it was. I hadn't even gotten an "I love you, Son" or a "happy birthday, motherfucker!" text on my phone.

I stomped down the stairs. I wasn't expecting party hats and balloons, and the first head in three months had been stellar, but the others could have at least-

On Edward's piano, propped against a case, midnight blue stain gleaming on the body, its matte black and silver pickups winking in the light from the booth, was an NS stick bass.

I stared at it, swallowing the lump in my throat and feeling ridiculous and childish for my insecurity. The date might have made me a legal adult, but I still had a long way to go.

* * *

Where would you get a new tattoo?


	17. Coiled Spring

Most of us would have fresh ink on a delicate place: wrists, feet, or back of the neck. I would have more stars in secret places.

There's a short-shot called "Soft Focus" in _Notebook of Wrong_, if you're bored on your coffee break.

ElleCC betas, Stephenie owns the Twilight stuff, and I own mine.

**

* * *

Alice:  
**I loved the spring, when the leafy trees were lighter Kelly and peridot, and the pines seemed softer, more feathery and emerald rather than hard evergreen. One could find the beginning of one's soul in the spring, that reawakening of self after winter's dormancy, and I was ready for it, to have my ego rekindled after its long hiatus through the cold months, finally sprung from the trap of my healing body's needs. Dad had released the last stitches two days ago, pronouncing my knitting skin very healthy though I was still too squeamish to examine closely. I could wait a week or two, judging by the way Jasper's tattoo was healing, and when I changed the light gauze, I didn't look, and my patient boyfriend didn't ask to see, even though I knew he was curious. Curious and patient and frustrated, every look, every touch, every whisper in the dark in my direction was as potent as the spring.

We all were outside in the back parking lot at Aro's, waiting to start our rehearsal for the Blues Fest opening, because Felix was still moving tables in the dining room and it was too lovely to be inside, the rain finally giving way to sun yesterday. We were going first this evening, and I was secretly glad; I still got tired in the evenings, and too much activity made me ache, and maybe we could get home early enough that I could have some quality time alone with my boyfriend, for his penis was of the highest quality and I wanted to spend some time with it, preferably as far up in me as it would go. We'd not been alone while awake for almost a week; the band had been practicing every spare moment – almost until we dropped – for this last public set before the Q'wolves sendoff and the tour.

The band was now goofing around, tinkering with the song Bella wrote for me while I was in the hospital, light-hearted chick blues but adding a masculine bass line that cut through the cuteness. Angela Weber was playing with a new camera, coasting on Ben's skateboard for long rolling shots, while he grimaced when her balance wobbled, out of fear for her or the equipment or his precious board – probably all three.

I was lying belly down on the roof of Bella's truck, elbows tucked under to keep from mashing my still tender chest, and my toes pointed to the distant clouds. Jazz was sprawled across the hood, his back on the windshield, acoustic bass draped over his lap like a woman with generous hips. Rose sat in the open cab, picking her dad's old guitar, while Emmett thrashed in the back, tapping sticks over various spots on the Chevy, playing the truck like it was a steel drum, murmuring words in a low voice like he was coaxing the odd melodic notes from the frame. Edward sat cross-legged on the tailgate, hunched over a toy eighteen key piano that had a surprisingly good tone, looking like Schroeder from Peanuts. Bella leaned back against him, face turned up to the sun as she sang:

_Someday she's gonna drive  
A yellow Porsche to the moon,  
On a road lit with stars,  
Paved with midnight blue-_

And I jumped in on the harp in my fist, reedy wistful draw, stealing the song out from under her, making it mine, because it was about me after all, dreaming of driving fast on an open highway in a chic car, going somewhere fabulous, and I was the road and the car and the longing, every teen girl's anthem, angst and hope and candy, desperate to fly. I played, lilting notes that danced away in the spring wind, and then Bella took the words again, with Twin harmonizing underneath and I muted the tone with my palms, until she gave it back again and the others faded out, until it was just Jasper and me: his bass, the purr of an engine; and my harp, the wail of the wind.

"Damn," Santiago called from the backdoor of the restaurant where a small crowd had gathered. "Is that on the new album?"

"Nah," Emmett yelled back. "Bella's truck won't fit in the basement!"

Santiago introduced Angela and me to Charlotte, some sort of marketing agent working with the record label, and then berated me for not bringing my guitar, and I apologized without explaining that playing still made my chest ache, but I promised him I would bring it to the kickoff concert in Olympia. He nodded and wandered off to boast to Emmett about his Zildjian endorsement, so I introduced Charlotte to Siobhan and they talked about Ireland until my eyes were about to cross with all the Gaelic place names, and I noticed Jane in the doorway, blinking up at Seth, her eyes shining with a schoolgirl crush.

"I think you've been supplanted, brother-dear," I said to Edward.

"She seems to have a thing for piano players," Bella said, laughing.

**Jasper:**  
"Who is that?" Alice asked, glance flicking to our left. I followed her gaze to the bar, where Aro stood talking to a man in his late twenties with ash blond hair. They both turned to look at us, and Aro nodded a greeting. "You should go say hello. He's important."

"How do you know?" I asked her, though Aro's stance and posture toward the man was of a meeting of equals; he poured the whiskey into the man's glass himself, after Felix handed him the bottle, rather than letting the bartender do it.

"Because he's so used to wearing Armani that he rolls up his cuffs."

I set down my amplifier by the piano. Felix caught my eye and nodded to the two men, and I nodded back, taking the hint. I walked over, hoping my shoes didn't squeak.

"Aro," I said, holding out my right hand, "thank you for having us tonight."

"Jasper!" He shook my hand. "This is Peter. You'll be working with him this summer. We were toasting to the success of your sold out tour! Care to join us?"

Felix's spine stiffened; he was obviously uncomfortable with serving me alcohol.

"Not before I go on, but thank you," I dodged, and Felix relaxed.

"What is this stuff, anyway?" Peter asked. "It's very smooth." He sounded disappointed with Aro's higher-than-the-top shelf brand. I scanned the labels behind the bar, quickly.

"Try Bulleit, if you prefer something that bites back a little," I suggested. "Higher rye content still keeps it sweet, but gives it teeth." Thank you, Grandpa Platt, I mentally saluted, for leaving behind such a fine collection of bourbon; grown men looked past a younger one's age when he could talk about good whiskey.

Felix pulled the bottle down at Aro's nod, and I watched Peter's face as he tasted it. He smiled, and nodded. Aro smirked at me, and Felix watched us in the mirror. This was a test, I realized. So far, I had passed.

"So, Jasper." Peter studied my face as he spoke, sharp eyes cutting through his casual tone. "Apparently we have your band to thank for boosting our ticket sales. Santiago seems to think you might be on board with extending the tour?"

Actually, the Volturi Guard drummer had inferred something a bit different; his spin on the situation had downplayed our part considerably. I looked over my shoulder to the table where he sat with three pretty girls, still wearing the orange leather jacket from the latest fashion spread, even though it was obviously too warm for the mid-May weather. He was tapping the table setting with his silverware, a mock drum routine, showing off. As we watched, he knocked over a glass with his spoon. He laughed as the girls squealed and gathered up the spilled ice. Felix sighed, and grabbed a stack of bar towels. Peter shook his head, chuckling, but when he saw me watching him, he shrugged and took a sip of the bourbon.

"So when does the new album drop?" Aro asked, pulling focus back to us.

"We'll put it on the website for downloading and mail order next week, and up on iTunes and Amazon the week after."

"Did you get a GS1 barcode?" Peter asked. It was a key question. We'd put _Songs for Elizabeth_ up without a proper UPC on the disc, and most mainstream stores couldn't put it on their shelves because it wouldn't scan on a register. We'd had to get stickers printed and label each CD by hand, and the delay cost us sales.

I nodded. "A few chains have pre-ordered already. Emmett could tell you more; he handles anything to do with numbers."

"Will we hear some of it tonight?" Aro asked. Numbers didn't interest him unless they were his own.

I nodded again.

"So, what do you think of adding more dates?" Peter asked, setting down his glass with a sharp thump. He _was_ interested in numbers. He looked me square in the eye, but I refused to be intimidated by his direct question.

"I'd have to discuss what you are offering with the rest of the band," I answered politely. Peter raised an eyebrow; he hadn't offered anything yet. At Aro's stillness, I wondered if I'd been too cocky. Should I have jumped at the opportunity and been grateful?

"I'd love to have your opinion of the new stuff," I continued, keeping my tone deferential, "and how it might influence the tour and sales." He nodded, mollified, and Aro smirked again. I'd said the right thing.

"We'll talk after your set," he said smiling, offering his right hand. I shook it, wondering who the hell he was.

"Jazz," Edward called from across the room, cable spilling from his arms. I walked over to help him, grabbing the ends of two cords. He asked, "Who was that? It looked like business."

"I think it was," I said. "We all need to talk, and fast."

"About the added shows to the tour?" Emmett asked, tossing me another plug.

I nodded.

"Dude," Em said, "just do what you think is best. We trust you."

I gaped at his back as he left for another load of equipment. Edward punched me on the shoulder.

"You got us this far, brother," he said, grinning.

Dazed, I wandered outside and leaned up against Bella's truck, trying to think straight. I wanted a drink and cigarette, I wanted to be alone with Alice, and I either wanted to be an adult and confident or a kid and oblivious, not this in between shit that left me terrified to my bones.

I needed the courage to make decisions that would affect the lives of six people, and I needed it fast. I knew what I wanted; I just wasn't sure I had the balls to ask.

My thoughts drifted to my father, Major Whitlock Hale, who had led troops into war zones, and of Carlisle, whose actions saved lives daily, and I wondered how the hell they made the choices that they did.

"Jasper, it's time, we need you," Alice called out to me, simplifying everything to six words.

I joined them, and we played our guts out, prepping the crowd with favorites, and then throwing the new songs at them, and they caught them in both hands, applause wild and excited. I felt it, each face in the audience, and the satisfaction when a hook closed with a bang or trailed off into the distance. Bella was in perfect form, shy and lovely, and Rosalie played with her, drawing her out; she pushed back, challenging my sister to a higher level. Emmett was on fire, so hot that I had to pull him back a few times, but he didn't fight me, and Edward was right beside me, never once looking up at me for cues, but nailing each one, every time.

Alice was herself, spinning between us, giving us soul and spontaneity, drawing the attention where the focus needed to be, vital and gorgeous and healthy, and every solo she played stole my breath and heart. During the first song, she flirted with the audience and winked at me, and on the last, she flirted with me and winked at them, and I felt like a million bucks that someone so alive and fun wanted me.

The applause was amazing, but even better was the cheer when we announced the release date for _Tropic of Virgo_.

We struck the stage, and Liam and Siobhan began their load in. On a trip to the mini-van, Peter called my name. He was standing by the back door, smoking with a tall blonde woman I remembered seeing earlier.

I grinned at him, hands in the back pockets of my jeans, trying to keep from acting like I knew how good we really were, but still looking him straight in the eye.

He gave me a long look and then slowly smiled.

"So, what do you want?" he asked.

I took a deep breath and let it halfway out, forcing my voice to remain even. Virgil wrote, _Fortune favors the bold._

"Joint billing," I said, very aware of the tension in the spine of the woman next to us. "The Guard opens for us on the added shows."

His expression didn't change, but the woman exhaled with shock and a low chuckle.

"I'll see what I can do," said Peter, grinning.

**Alice:**  
Jasper handed me a crane, a delicate thing, folds pleated into the soft tissue of a cocktail napkin. "Eight hundred and nineteen," he whispered, and I kissed him for it, a quick "thank you" that lingered and then heated into "please."

"Can I have you?" he asked, breaking our kiss, his voice rough and low.

I nodded, and smiled, and thumbed through my playlists and settled on Alice in Chains _Jar of Flies,_ hoping to explain what words could not, my fear discordant and my love constant, and as the edgy metallic blues filled his room, Jasper smiled. He liked this album too, and I really wanted to cover "Don't Follow," a tight duet with a gorgeous harp solo, but any Northwest indie group that covered grunge songs was immediately pegged as a tribute band, though maybe on the tour we could, just to show our roots a little.

I twirled with my eyes closed, feeling the air in my skirts, stretching my wings, and he caught me from behind, palms warm at my waist and wrist. I stood still, but at the gentle pressure of his hands, I moved again, taking his lead. The music was slow and drifting, and I was caught in it, and him, and the way he smiled. The anticipation was strange and hesitant between us, holding me bound to him, but keeping me silent, unable to meet his eyes. He spun me, hand high above my head, and then caught me, left hand on my ribs, and his thumb drifted along the underside of my breast, and my skin sang at his touch, and he heard it, and bent his head to my temple, lips brushing a kiss at the corner of my eye.

"I would beg, you know," he murmured under his breath, and his breath smelled like sage smoke and caramel as I breathed his words in. "I would kneel at your feet and _beg,_ you own me that much."

I shook my head, unable to talk, swallowing against the wetness in my eyes and between my legs.

He dropped to his knees, and I cried out in protest, but his hands slid up the backs of my calves, under my dress skirts, his palms spreading heat and desire up my thighs, and higher, thumbs flicking the ribbon tags that secured my stockings, and his hands worked quickly, not begging but taking, tugging the garter belt off me, and sliding the tiny scrap of lace between my legs down to the floor.

"My brain is gone, Alice. You have no idea." He pressed his face into my lower belly, his words tangling with the kisses on my skin. "I've never wanted anything so much as you, right now. I want to go slow-"

He kissed me then, wet lips warm at the top of the top of the feminine flesh that was swelling for him, and I gasped, clutching at his head as my balance fled with my sanity, but his hands cupped my hips, keeping me steady.

"-But I'm so fucking desperate to be inside you, all I can think about-"

His tongue traced me up and down, and I opened for him like a flower, wet petals unfurling, ripe and ready.

"-is throwing you on the bed and pounding into you."

His lips settled over the bud of my sex with a slow soft sucking kiss, and I cried out at the heat, and again as he pulled away and blew cool air across the wet shivers spiking through every nerve on my skin.

"Do it," I whimpered. He growled then, both in disagreement and urgency, but the hands that lifted me were gentle, and he laid me back on the pillows with care. He pushed my thighs open with his hands, and I was pliant to his touch, no will of my own in the face of his desire.

He stepped away, eyes trained between my legs like I held the secrets of the universe there, and ripped his shirt off over his head.

"It's pretty," he said, tugging at the buttons of his jeans.

"Please, Jasper," I whispered as he kicked off his boots. "I feel so _empty_." Frustration and want had me almost panicked, and I fought to keep still, to let this be what he wanted, but as he peeled away the last of his clothes I couldn't help but sit up, reaching for him. His erection was huge, jutting out from his groin with a slight curve, head already flared and shiny with lust, boys underneath swollen and tight to his body. I wanted to moan, to taste and to pet, and wrap my fingers around him and guide him in, but he stayed out of my reach.

"Shhh," he said, and I looked up to see him watching my face with hooded eyes. "Lie down."

I did, and he knelt between my legs, bowing his head to my sex. The explicit kiss was less shocking than earlier, his tongue flat and wide and warm, but no less intense, and I writhed under his mouth, my hands in his hair, wanting more, wanting him inside. His lips fastened on the little cloaked pearl, velvet tongue lashing back and forth, soft and quick and hot as heaven, and I dug my heels into the bed and pushed my hips into his hands and face, keening with the burning pleasure and the empty misery. I begged him to fill me, but he kept going, steady pressure and subtle suction, teasing with the tip of his tongue, until I gave in to him, because he was giving it to me, whether I wanted it or not, liquid uncontrollable ecstasy tearing through nerves and skin and soul, and I screamed his name as I came into his mouth.

He moved up my body and surged into me as I shook with the spasms, both of us groaning as he thrust heavily into me, and then he pulled back and plunged deeper than he ever had, twice, and again, and then pulled out to jet hot and white across my stomach, gasping for air and control.

"Fuck," he whispered, and I whimpered, overwhelmed by the intensity and the suddenness of it all.

"God, Alice, are you okay?" he asked, pushing my hair from my face.

I nodded. "I wasn't expecting you to pull out," I mumbled, embarrassed for some reason, but pleased in a way, that I still felt nice enough that he'd lost his self-restraint . "I wanted to feel you finish in me."

"Oh, well, good." He reached down for his t-shirt and wiped his stuff off my belly, and settled back between my legs, cradling my head in one hand, fingers tangling in my hair. "Because I'm not finished. At all."

He shifted his hips and pushed back inside, not quite as hard as before, but still huge, filling me again.

"I just didn't want to make you sore." He smiled at me, eyes hot with pleasure and promise. He moved, slow and deep, twisting his hips a bit to feel me, growing steel hard again in an instant.

"Is it different?" I asked, gasping as he found a particularly nice angle.

"Yeah," he said, grinning. He slowed, and propped up on an elbow. "Give me your hand."

He sucked my thumb into his mouth most of the way, constant firm pressure all the way around, but blocked the tip from pushing any deeper with his tongue. He pulled my hand away, and then kissed my mouth.

"That's how it was," he said, and moved his hips to pull away a fraction. I whined a little, and thrust up to pull him back, liking this new depth.

"And now?" I asked.

He took my thumb again, his mouth slightly softer, and pulled me in all the way, and then flexed his hips, pushing into my body to the hilt.

I nodded, understanding, then moved my thumb in and out, imitating the act, and he bit me.

"It's nice," he said. "I don't have to be so careful when I go deep." He put actions to words, and I sighed and locked my ankles around his back.

"You're more relaxed inside," he continued, building a steady rhythm, "except at the opening, where you're tighter than you used to be."

I didn't explain that the gyno nurse had advised me to research Kegel exercises, which would help prevent prolapse and other post-hysterectomy side effects, because he was stroking me deep inside, slick slide grinding up against me on the outside where we were connected, perfect and lovely and less urgent than before, just love and pleasure and joining, completeness of the highest order.

"Is that good?" I asked between panting breaths, knowing by the way he was moving that it was, but I liked his voice and the control he had as he thrust into me, so different from his earlier frenzy.

"Yeah. God, yeah, Alice."

He was moving faster, still propped on one elbow, and slid his other hand between us, fingers splayed across my belly and thumb high in my folds where he knew I liked it, and I ground against him as he moved faster, heavier, and his azure eyes were locked on my face as I rapidly lost all coherent thought, drowning in the aquamarine and gasping for air as he pulled me to the surface, and I rode the waves in his arms as he filled me over and over.

"I love you," he gasped, collapsing on me, then rolling to the side so that I could breathe. I curled into him, and he held me, stroking my hair while my heartbeat returned to normal.

"Better?" he asked me, after a minute.

"Yeah," I said, grinning up at him. "You?"

"Yeah."

My phone rang with Edward's tone, and Jasper groaned and laughed. "Dude has good timing, at least."

"Alice," Twin yelled. "Get Emmett, and have him take Dad to the hospital to meet us."

"What's going on?" I asked, my stomach clenching in fear. I scrambled out of Jasper's bed and back to my room for some underwear. "Are you okay?"

"_We're_ fine. Emily's hurt really bad. Is Jazz with you?"

I flipped it to speaker phone, though I knew he could hear Edward shouting.

"Dude, I'm here." Jasper said, climbing back into his jeans. "What happened?"

"I'm at the Clearwaters'! Emily was just attacked on her front porch by something. Her face is torn up, bad, and we can't get ahold of Sue. Sam and Leah and Jake are all still in Port Angeles, and no one is answering; they're probably still playing! Do you have Paul's number?"

In the background, we could hear Seth screaming hysterically.

"Fuck, Jazz, I can't get him to calm down. We can put Emily in the back of Bella's truck but I can't drive with him like this and I can't leave him here! There's a lot of blood, and he's freaking out. What the hell could have done this?"

"Put Seth on the phone, I'll see if I can talk him down. You take care of Emily." Jasper grabbed two random socks and stuffed his feet into his black boots.

I grabbed some shoes and ran down the hall, shouting for my father.

* * *

What was the last album you bought?


	18. Crane Forms

We buy whole albums out of loyalty; the top album was 100 Monkeys _Grape, _and the New Moon soundtrack was second. I bought AiC's _Black Gives Way to Blue._

ElleCC made this readable. (Have you hugged a beta lately?)  
The names belong to Stephenie Meyer.

**

* * *

Jasper:**

"Okay, Seth. I have the little square with the open corners pointed down. Now what?" I asked, keeping my voice even and low.

Alice glanced at me but said nothing. She turned a sharp corner, trying to keep up with Carlisle's sedan as we sped toward town. My sister was driving Carlisle's car so that he could use his phone to talk to Bella as she took care of Emily and then call ahead to the hospital; Emmett was sprawled in the backseat.

"Make the side corners meet in the middle," he whispered. His breathing was still uneven, but I'd managed to talk him into the truck with Edward. He hadn't wanted to walk out of the house, but given the option of that or staying home alone, he'd gone with them. Now we were both on speaker phone, both twins driving to the hospital from opposite ends of town.

"Now I flip it and do the other side, right?" I asked, mentally folding the paper.

"Yeah."

"Then what do I do?"

"Crease the top down."

"Now I open it back up, right?"

"Yes."

I heard the truck hit a bump, and Edward cursed, and Seth whimpered.

"Dude, what's next?" I asked quickly, trying to distract him from whatever had startled him. "I'm back to my square, but now it's got fold lines all through it. What do I do now?"

"P-ppull the b-bottom corner up to make a diamond."

"Both sides?"

"Yeah."

I waited to see if he would initiate the next fold. Alice glanced sideways at me, and shook her head. I sighed.

"Now what?"

"I don't know," he wailed, fighting me, but his rebellion seemed like a good sign.

"Yes, you do, Seth," I said. "Picture it in your head. I've got a diamond that's split on the bottom half. What's the next fold?"

"Side corners to the middle," he said, and then after a moment, "Both sides."

Alice smiled at this tiny triumph.

"So I've got a skinny diamond with long tails," I said. "What now?"

"Pull the tail ends up and out, sideways. You're making me focus, aren't you?" he accused, his voice almost normal.

"We're almost there, buddy," Edward said.

"Is it working?" I asked, deliberately smiling to keep my tone light.

"Maybe," Seth said, on top of Edward's, "Yes."

"Did you pull the wings down?" he asked.

"Not yet."

Alice pointed ahead of us. The red truck was pulling into the hospital, Bella in the back, supporting Emily's head in her lap. I couldn't see her face, but her knees were drawn up, bracing against the movement of the Chevy.

"She's conscious," Alice whispered with relief.

"Pull the top wing flaps down and out so the body puffs up," Seth directed.

"Okay," I said.

"Then bend the tip of one of the skinny ends to make the head," he said, as we pulled into the parking lot behind the ER double doors.

Alice parked, and I jumped out and waved to Seth. He was still sitting in the cab with Edward, but he raised his hand in a hesitant greeting. Emmett and the EMT on duty lifted Emily onto the gurney, and Carlisle strode into the hospital, yelling for equipment. Edward parked the truck, and Seth and he met us at the entrance, where Bella was talking to her father.

"I didn't see or hear anything, Dad," she protested, "just a sort of growling, and then Emily screamed and Seth went nuts!"

"What did you see, son?" Chief Swan asked. His voice was kind, but the boy began to shake, eyes darting everywhere, dodging our faces, and his breathing accelerated.

Charlie looked alarmed, and Edward touched Seth's arm, but he flinched.

"Dude," I said, "you've gotta breathe."

He looked at me helplessly, his face screwed up with anxiety.

"Let's give him some air," Edward said, and everyone stepped back a bit.

Bella picked up the blanket they'd laid Emily on, and wrapped it around his shoulders.

"Deep breaths," I murmured to him, and he nodded, taking a long shuddering breath in and holding it.

"Tell me if he says anything," Charlie muttered.

Bella said, in a hushed tone, "She had fur on her hands, Dad."

"What kind?" asked the chief. "Dark? Like a bear?"

Bella shook her head. "It was light."

"And orange-ish," whispered Seth.

Charlie Swan stared at him, and his moustache curled around his mouth as he pursed his lips. He stepped away, and we heard him on his cell phone, asking for an emergency contact number at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Bella shuddered, and Edward put his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

"You're wonderful," Alice whispered, tucking my hair behind my ear. She tilted her head toward Seth, who finally had some color on his face and was breathing somewhat normally.

"He's a good kid," I mumbled, pleased with her praise.

Edward caught my eye and nodded, and I shrugged one shoulder. He was the one who had physically managed to get the frantic boy into the truck, not me.

Emmett and Rose came out of the double doors, Em's loose gait proof to those who knew him that he'd been drinking, which explained why Rose had driven Carlisle's car.

"Dad got a hold of Aro," my older stepbrother said. "So, your mom's on her way, Seth."

Charlie walked toward us, still talking on the phone. "It's your turf, Billy, just tell me what you want. I can send someone out now, or I'll wait here, and you and I'll head to Third Beach together. Hang on." He pulled the phone away from his face and spoke to us. "Can you guys stay here with Seth? We're going to have to get a statement."

He didn't wait for a reply, just walked into the hospital, still talking.

"It's not like I'm going to drive off to Mexico," Seth muttered to his shoes, and then grinned tentatively when Emmett chuckled.

"Is she going to be okay?" he asked, after a while.

"Dad's a very good doctor," Alice assured him.

We stood around, not saying much, just waiting for someone to tell us what was going on, but not wanting to go inside where the florescent lights of the ER waiting room sharpened worry and impatience. Emmett sat on the pavement, tapping broken eighth beats on the side of his shoe with his palms. A dark riff twisted in my head, the under-grind of "Transylvania" by Creature with the Atom Brain sliding in and out of his rhythm, taking shape from the tension and the night shadows under the garish street lamps in the parking lot. Rosalie fidgeted while Alice was still, adding to the wrongness, and my nerves felt pulled to breaking.

I was about to go in and ask if there was any news when a black Suburban pulled up next to Bella's truck, and Paul, Jared and Collin got out, slamming the doors behind them.

At the sight of the older Quileute boys, the one next to us shrunk back against the brick wall of the hospital and picked at the blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Edward and I glanced at each other and stepped closer, trying to shield him from the boys, but Jared rolled his eyes, and Paul snapped his fingers at him, beckoning.

"He's not a dog," Alice objected, but the tension roiled like smoke, and she didn't say anything more.

"C'mon, Seth, we're going in," Collin called.

Seth didn't move, but he began to shake again. I sighed, wondering how much stress one kid could take in an evening.

"My father wanted us all to stay here, so he could get a statement," Bella said, voice and chin firm.

"Your father doesn't have jurisdiction over the tribe," Paul said, sneering. "Let's go, Seth. Sam's waiting for us up front."

Edward and I shared another look, but it was Emmett who stood and stepped up to the boys. Paul was not much shorter than he was, but his spine stiffened at my stepbrother's approach, and he glowered, stance aggressive.

"I think he's going to stay with us," Em said, with a polite smile.

"How much has he had to drink?" I whispered to Rosalie.

She shrugged. "Enough," she said.

"I don't think so," Paul said to Emmett. "Quileutes do not associate with Cullens."

"Except for faggoty piano lessons," Collin said, jeering at Edward.

"In that case, should my father stop putting Emily's face back together?" Em asked, his voice still pleasant.

"You know what they used to call doctors?" Paul snarled. _"Leeches." _Saliva sprayed from his mouth as he said it, and Emmett blinked once as spit hit his cheek.

"Oops," breathed Alice, and Paul staggered backward as Emmett's fist connected with his chin.

The tension between all of us shattered like crystal.

**Alice:  
**We could have been at a carnival, and I wanted to hear calliope music, or maybe some ridiculously inappropriate pop song, like V. V. Brown's "Shark in the Water," bouncy and bright and as wrong and funny as the fact that my underwear was gooey from the love that Jasper and I had made less than an hour ago, and now we were in a parking lot watching someone discover that punching my big brother in the chest wouldn't do much more than get his knuckles split. Didn't everyone know that you just don't pick fights with drummers? They're the most physically fit people on earth.

Rosalie's eyes were huge in her porcelain face, and a grin was threatening to crack her mouth. Edward was watching Collin and Paul with the curiosity a large cat has for prey, and Bella hovered over Seth, shielding the boy from the violence.

Both Jared and Jasper yelled at Paul while Emmett contemplated the situation and then tapped him in the chest with a loose fist, as if showing him how it was supposed to be done. Paul sat down hard, and Emmett nodded, and held out a hand to help the boy up, clearly considering the matter resolved, but Paul launched up from the ground and planted his clenched hand in my brother's lower belly and the other in his eye as he doubled over.

Rose jumped forward, but Bella and I grabbed her arms, and she let us hold her back as her boyfriend staggered, shaking his head like a bull. Jasper grinned at us as Em raised his fists and began to sway on the balls of his feet, and again I heard the fairground sounds – this time the bell as the boxers faced off in a betting ring.

Edward wasn't smiling though. His attention was fixed on Collin, who was jumping around like a hyena, screaming profanities I wasn't even sure _I _understood, a savage carny barker babbling just to distract. Jared was shouting on the phone to someone, but I didn't hear a word.

Emmett swiped at Paul, clipping his jaw, but the other boy moved faster, and clocked him in the temple. My big brother reeled, but found his balance after a second and jabbed a quick two-shot, one to Paul's cheek and one to his chest again. Paul staggered, but as he recovered and closed in, Collin charged from behind, kicking Emmett's calf hard. My brother fell to his knees, grunting in pain, fumbling with his hands to find purchase on the ground. As Paul moved forward, grabbing Emmett's right ear with his left hand, and clutching at his hair with the other, Collin stepped on Emmett's hand, pinning him down.

Seth screamed.

The music stopped, and ice slithered over my skin at the terror that ripped from the boy's throat. His eyes were fixed wide on the fighting boys, and he pressed his hands to his ears. A dark urine stain spread across the front of his khaki pants.

I felt like I was in a movie**, **when everything halts to a dead stop around the main character and the scene spins in slow motion, but no overused cinema tableau or literary phrase about time standing still could describe the clarity of detail that I saw in that split nanosecond: Bella was wearing a royal blue t-shirt – one of the first I'd ever deconstructed for her; Rose had a broken thumbnail; and Edward had moved to a low crouch, as if ready to spring.

"Ahh," Jasper breathed with strange epiphany, suddenly the focus of the film we were in, and still looking at Seth, he leapt forward in an oddly graceful move, one arm outstretched and the other cocked across his chest, braced for the impact as he smashed his elbow between Paul's shoulder blades. So that's what that move is for, I thought, recognizing the crane form from his workouts; a good thing to know if one ever needed to jump ten feet across a parking lot to defend your six-foot-gazillion-inch drunk older brother from a pair of rabid Quileute boys. Paul lost his grip on Emmett, knocking him backwards and sending Collin sprawling.

Jasper jumped back and spun away, pivoting low to haul Collin up by his hood, and hurled him into Edward, who wrestled him to the asphalt in a policeman's hold.

Paul grappled with Emmett on the ground, beating at him with his fists, but my brother shook him off and rolled away. The Quileute boy climbed to his feet and rushed him, raising a boot to kick at his head, but Jasper stepped forward and kicked his thigh, sending him stumbling. My boyfriend stalked toward the bigger boy, eyes and expression dark as night, and nothing was funny anymore.

He circled Paul, steps lethal and deliberate, and I heard the crack of fist on bone even before I saw him move. He reared back and lashed out again before the dark haired boy recovered, and then calmly stepped back a pace, out of reach of the other, who was swinging with both fists wild.

I tried to make my lips move, to call his name to bring him back to himself, but I didn't know who he was, this deadly man who watched the bigger boy, with black eyes that normally held the sky. A tear ran down my face, into my mouth, and the salt taste reminded me of blood, and I wanted to scream the way Seth had.

Paul charged him then, and Jasper sidestepped and twisted, driving him to the ground with a forearm to his back. He grabbed the Quileute boy's hair in his fist, pulling his neck backwards, and raised his boot.

"Jasper, no!" Rosalie darted forward, grabbing his shoulder.

"_Run_, Rose!" he shouted, his face contorted with panic, and my heart stopped in fear, and then began to pound against my ribs as the trepidation I'd felt since that ominous night in January coalesced into this moment.

**Jasper:  
**I panted for breath as the bloodlust receded from my brain and my eyes refocused to the person next to me. I stared at my sister, somehow surprised that I was taller than she was.

Rosalie stared back with my own eyes, but they were fringed with mascara, set in a woman's face with chiseled cheekbones, not the round cherub cheeks of almost six years ago, still soft with baby flesh. The tears were the same, though.

"Jasper, _stop_!" she cried, tugging on my arm. "I'm okay. We're all okay. Stop."

"Rosie," I said, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, deeper, adult and strange.

She nodded. "Stop," she repeated.

I looked down to my fist full of Paul's hair, and I shifted my weight and uncocked the thigh tensed to drive my boot into the boy's spine. I set down my foot carefully on his back with deliberate pressure – an obvious threat – and he stopped struggling. I heard Alice exhale with a sob, and Rosalie closed her eyes in relief.

"Tell Seth you're okay," I demanded in that same dark voice.

"Fuck you," Paul spat.

I jerked on his hair, and pressed with my foot. He groaned.

"Seth," he called out, and Bella turned the shaking Clearwater boy around so that he faced us, though he wouldn't meet my or Paul's eyes. "Dude, chill. We're just rough housing."

"That's not what it looks like to me!" Chief Swan yelled, slamming through the double doors. Sam Uley followed, catching the door to hold it open for Billy Black's wheelchair. "What the hell is going on?"

"Can you take fingerprints from someone's ear?" I asked Charlie, and my voice echoed off the cars in the lot. Adrenaline sang in my bones; I was almost shaking with it. I wanted to look at Alice, to make sure she was still okay, but I didn't want to see what would be reflected in her eyes.

"What?" he asked, glaring at me. "From Paul?"

"No, from Emmett." I slowly let go of Paul's hair, and he scrambled away to sit at Sam's feet.

"He hit me first," Paul yelled.

"You spat on me," mumbled Em, working his knee with his hands.

"That's television science fiction," Charlie said to me, confused and annoyed. "CSI stuff. We can't do that."

"It doesn't matter," I said, ignoring both of the boys sitting on the ground. "Seth saw it happen-"

"Everyone here saw it happen," screamed Collin. He struggled in Edward's grip, and my brother released him abruptly, letting him fall to his hands and knees on the pavement.

"Shut up," Jared snapped, hauling him to his feet and frog marching him to stand behind Paul and Sam.

"-the first time," I continued, holding Sam Uley's gaze with my own. "He was there."

Sam inhaled audibly, and his eyes flicked to Seth and then back to me.

Musashi said, _"In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won."_

Charlie Swan exchanged a glance with Billy Black.

Sam had paled, but he still smiled slightly. "I'm sure you're mistaken. Seth has… issues with reality. C'mere, kid." He crooked a finger at the boy, who shrank away from the gesture. "Let's go say hello to Emily."

"I don't think so." Jacob Black stepped from the shadows and touched Seth's shoulder. Bella moved away, and Leah Clearwater wrapped her arms around her little brother. Quil and Embry stood behind Jake.

Sam stared at them.

"Alice," I asked, not looking in her direction, afraid that I would crumble if I saw her crying or afraid of me. "You found the shoe near Sue's house?"

"Yes," she said, her voice ringing strong and firm over the crowd of people. "Seth was afraid I would go into the clearing in the pines."

Chief Swan and Chief Black shared another look, but neither seemed surprised.

"Alice is nice," whispered Seth. "I didn't want her neck to make that noise."

Edward hissed, and my face got hot and my stomach churned. I gripped my hands into fists, fighting against the tears that pricked the backs of my eyes at the boy's words.

"It was an accident."

Our attention all turned to Paul. His head hung between his knees, hands smeared blood.

"I didn't mean to. I didn't know I could hurt someone that bad," he said, looking up, pleading with us, his copper face twisted in horror. I wanted to feel sorry for him – I had been in his place and I understood the self-revulsion at what one could do with his own hands – but my mind was focused on the result of his actions, not his feelings.

"He was scum! He was shit!" yelled Collin, breaking the crowd's trance. "He came to the Res looking for James's drugs! We were protecting the tribe!"

"Shut up!" Jared shook the younger boy's shoulder so hard his head rocked on his neck.

I smelled the chilly night air, pine and distant ocean and the crowd's anticipation, and I tried to clear my head, looking to see the whole picture in all the spread out puzzle pieces.

"If this took place on Quileute land, by a native acting for the tribe, then it becomes a matter for the council." Sue Clearwater's voice was soft but held deadly authority. She stood in the doorway of the emergency room, the light behind her making a silhouette of her and Carlisle.

Billy Black grimaced, and Paul and Collin looked terrified.

"Is that why you moved the body?" I asked Sam. He looked away and said nothing, his jaw hard.

"Jasper," Carlisle called, and I cringed inwardly at the interruption, not wanting to give up the upper hand to parental control – I was calling the shots, and I didn't have all my answers yet – but the doctor's voice was deferential when he spoke again, "Emily is asking for Sam."

"One moment, Dad," I answered, squaring off in front of the Quileute drummer.

Carlisle nodded once, a crooked smile flashing across his face as he moved to stand behind me, and all eyes turned to me again. In my periphery, I saw my sister arch an eyebrow.

In the _Art of War_, Munenori said, _"There is a Zen saying called 'beating the grass to scare the snakes,' a ploy used to startle the opponent."_

"How did you know Jared was driving Kim's car and not his Suburban that night?" I asked Sam. "I said _his_ windshield was broken, not hers."

His eyes widened, and I could see him searching his thoughts for an explanation. There may have been one, but Jared winced.

"You set me up." I said. "You knew I'd never leave a butt burning in the woods – you threw it there intentionally. You wanted me to find that body."

The hush from the assembled people was oddly satisfying.

"You sent him to us," Sam bit out. "He said 'some white kid named Jasper told him to look on the Reservation.' I was just letting you claim your garbage."

"You all killed him, and you wanted _me_ to take the fall for it?" I seethed. "Why? What did I ever do to you?"

"Better your band than mine," he said, shrugging, but he turned his head and looked at Jacob and the Q'wolves. They stared back, unforgiving.

"You son of a bitch," Alice said, stalking toward him, and I moved quickly, catching her about her waist, hauling her to my chest, and for a second I closed my eyes, breathing her fire and anger and spirit. She wriggled in my arms and turned around to face Sam, pulling my hands around her middle, holding me while I held her. I wasn't sure if she was restraining me, or I was restraining her, but suddenly I felt like I had an army behind me as we faced Sam.

"I'll see Emily now," he said, turning away from us.

"Actually, I think it would be very stressful for her to see you in handcuffs," Carlisle said. His voice was colder than I'd ever heard it.

Sam stopped short and stared at him, and then turned to Chief Black.

"I agree with the doctor," Billy said.

"Since when do you side with Cullens?" Sam raged at him.

"They just saved your fiancée's life, boy," he countered. "Chief Swan, whose jurisdiction is whose, here?"

"I have no idea. Sue?"

"I don't care," she said. "Charlie, you take them in on disorderly conduct for the night, and we'll sort it out in the morning."

"Then who's going to your place to hunt a rogue mountain lion?" Billy protested.

An argument bubbled over, but it was one that belonged to frustrated law enforcement folk and had nothing to do with music or my family, so I tuned it out, feeling the last of the adrenaline seep from my veins and exhaustion take its place.

Rosalie looked at me, smiling, and ruffled my hair like I was a little kid.

"You heard me," she said, blue eyes cleared of distant ghosts.

"Thank you," I said, equally freed. The words sounded too small, but she nodded, and stepped back to hover over Carlisle while he looked at Emmett's swollen eye.

"Let's get out of here," the girl in my arms murmured. We moved away from the crowd, and they didn't notice us leave.

Alice and I walked to Carlisle's office, holding hands but saying nothing, finally collapsing in one of his armchairs, curled together as we slept. He woke us when Emily was in stable enough condition for him to leave, and I drove us home.

* * *

What is your favorite carnival ride?


	19. Farewell to Pachyderms

We are mostly split between our love for the Ferris wheel and things that spin until our stomach sinks 400 feet below sea level, though a few of us like bumper cars.

ElleCC betas this bizarreness, Stephenie owns what I don't, and you all are fabulous.

**

* * *

Alice:**  
Emmett dumped the shake into the bowl and tamped it down with his thumb.

"That's the last of it," he said.

"Friends, lovers, and family," Jasper intoned, picking up the lighter, "we come to the end of an era."

Rosalie snorted, and Edward rolled his eyes, but we let Jasper have his moment; he'd had a busy week with _Tropic of Virgo_ coming out, council hearings with the reservation elders and statements to Charlie at the station, and a bizarre devil's bargain to produce the Q'Wolves first "single" disc of four songs, on top of final exams and getting ready for the tour.

I'd wanted to grill him about what was said at LaPush, but when Dad brought him home, he looked so tired and sad that I just took him to bed and held him until the lines eased from his face and his lips parted with benign dreams. I went with Bella to the hospital when she visited Emily, even though I hardly knew her; Sam was there, and I felt his eyes on me, though he looked away whenever I glanced at him. He didn't go to the tribal jail in Neah Bay with Paul, but instead was on some kind of house arrest and couldn't leave the reservation except to visit his fiancée at the hospital with an escort, which meant that he wouldn't be going with the Q'wolves on the Delta Blues tour, even if they would have him, which they wouldn't. Jacob Black had stepped up to vocals, and Leah was now on drums, and according to Emmett, quite good.

This evening we'd finally had a chance to relax and hang out a bit by ourselves. Our phones were off and six shot glasses were neatly stacked by a bottle of something Jasper said we were to appreciate for its oaky finish, which I didn't like but it made my belly warm, and now we all sat on the floor, none of us willing to ask Jasper about the elephant that was hanging out of his back pocket. It was teal with yellow spots at the moment, and held Jazz's secrets in its trunk, and I'd named him Fred, and wondered which of us would break the silence to point out that even though it was invisible, we could all see him –probably Emmett; he was worse than me about giving in to curiosity.

Jazz started playing low chords on the stick bass, and Bella's eyes flashed in recognition. If she had been a wood nymph, her pointed ears would have pricked forward; the smile she flashed at him was elfin and conspiratorial. The little braids I'd been weaving into her hair all evening helped the look, too.

"Which version?" she asked.

"I like the piano in the Tracy James version, but the phrasing sucks," Edward offered. "Mary Ann and the Professors' has the best guitar, but Grace Potter's vocals are cooler."

I wanted to fuss at them for getting all musical-knowledgier-than thou, but I had the feeling that their secrecy was for my benefit, and I wasn't going to let them get under my skin, especially since Jasper was pointedly looking everywhere except me, with the little smile that he had when he was trying to give me a present or a secret, or yesterday when the little purple crane said, "_You come and the time slips away in a dream"_ inside, and when I asked him who said it, he said "Henry Miller" in a voice that was pure foreplay, making the quote erotic, and he smiled _that_ smile: my smile.

"What would Jasper do?" Bella asked Twin, batting her lashes with some private joke between them. My boyfriend looked startled, but Edward just grinned at him.

"He'd tell us to make it our own," he said, and Jazz nodded, with a philosophic shrug.

Rosalie picked in a Spanish melody while Emmett tapped out military cadence, and I had to laugh when I realized they were playing "White Rabbit," and my best friend stuck her tongue out at me. I wondered where they wanted me in the song, because harmonica was just too weird with all the psychedelic electric blues, but then I found my place, just a light harmony sung above Bella's voice, and I sang as if I were dancing, single notes swirling and high.

"Jazz?" Emmett stopped cold three quarters of the way through the song, and Rosalie's solo trickled to a halt. Edward protested, fingers frozen on the keyboard on his lap, but Bella just waited. Jasper played on, smiling down at his bass, full of secrets, and my big brother frowned at him. "Why didn't you tell any of us? About finding the body?"

Hello, Fred.

"We had more important things to worry about at the time," Jasper said. No one looked at me, and I felt self-conscious and somehow very fragile. "And then when I realized Sam set me up, I wasn't about to stir up a shit-storm with the Quileutes until I figured out all of it."

"When did you suspect him?" Edward asked.

"At Aro's." My boyfriend ducked out from under the bass strap, and picked something off his dresser. He dropped it into Rosalie's hand. "What is that?"

She frowned. "Safety glass," she said.

Emmett looked. "From a car window," he added.

Jasper picked the chunk of pale blue glass from her open palm and put it in Bella's, and Edward and I clunked heads trying to see at the same time.

"It's the broken bead! It was wedged up in Jared's boot, and I cut my fingers on it," my best friend exclaimed, rubbing Edward's forehead, and then mine.

I giggled, then sobered, or at least as much as I could, given that we had just smoked the last of Jasper's weed, and the crystal dregs at the bottom of the bag were like pot concentrate, and now everything that moved looked like it had a comet tail.

"It's not, is it?" I asked. "I wondered where that color came from in the design, I thought maybe the eye? But everything on Embry's coat was black and white and red, which makes sense, because turquoise is a significant color in Navajo art, but not Makah or Quileute…"

"A stray bead wouldn't get stuck like that. It would just roll underfoot," Edward said slowly, and Jasper nodded. "You'd have to be driving your heel through something- oh."

"But why would he kick in his own windows?" Bella asked.

"To get the cops at our usual meeting spot, I think. Sam had to get me where they'd dumped the body, and knew I'd call him to meet somewhere else for the deal if the police were there." Jasper picked the bead out of her hand and put it back on his dresser where he kept his pocket stuff. I hoped he didn't carry it around with him; if it was sharp enough to slice Bella's skin, it would do terrible things to the fabric of his pants.

"Sam is slick, and he knew how to play me," he said, glancing at me. "He even bummed a smoke, so if I didn't go stomp out the butt, my brand would be near the body."

"Collin was in on it, too, wasn't he?" Twin asked. "He wasn't afraid to get involved, like he'd done something like that before."

Jasper nodded. "He's off to some juvenile hall somewhere. Jake said it's supposedly pretty awful."

"When did you know Seth saw it all?" Edward asked.

"I'd wondered about it when Alice brought home that red crane. I'd overheard Dad and Charlie talking, and they mentioned that there was sand in the guy's wounds, so I knew he'd been on the beach. And then I remembered that Dad stayed late that day because Seth got lost in the woods, but I was sure when he puked on Emmett." Jasper grinned at my big brother, who shuddered at the memory. "I'm sorry, dude. I had no idea that crane would be such a trigger."

His words hung in the room, and time did that strange thing where you listen to your heart beating, and then wonder if it is beating too slowly, because it seems like an eon has passed between each thump.

"How did you know Paul did it?" I asked, to break the silence before I freaked out from wondering if I was going into cardiac arrest.

"I didn't. Not until he grabbed Em's ear. That's when everything fell into place."

"So Paul was trying to break my neck?!" Emmett asked. He laughed, but Rosalie's fingers tangled in the guitar strings with a harsh twang.

Jasper shrugged, and smiled at her. "I wasn't going to give him the opportunity to try."

Rose reached out, touching Emmett's earlobe with a finger, and he grabbed her and pulled her close. "I appreciate that, man."

"So are we done with the twenty questions?" Jasper asked, looping the strap to the stick bass over his head. "Because if this is the last time I'm ever getting high, I'd like to be making music, not fucking up my buzz talking about a dead guy in the woods."

I highly doubted that it would be the last time my bohemian boyfriend would get high, but I appreciated the sentiment and patted his back pocket to say goodbye to Fred, though I was honestly just feeling his ass, which was yummy and grabbable. I kissed him, too, and his mouth was warm and wet and full of promise.

**Jasper:  
** "You're staring," Rosalie said, arching an eyebrow at Jacob Black.

"Yeah. Sorry," Jake mumbled. "Not many blondes on the Res."

Embry snorted and murmured something to Quil I didn't catch. Emmett and Leah were in the booth, listening to a practice take on one of Jake's new songs, and Edward and Seth were laughing at something Bella had said.

I felt like my space had been invaded – too many people I didn't know well enough in my private quarters. The basement was a hive of buzzing conversations, and as soon as I was unnecessary for any of them, I slipped upstairs to make another pot of coffee.

"I'd take some of that," Carlisle said, blinking at the sunlight streaming into the kitchen, looking like a blond wraith in worn out sweatpants and a holey t-shirt.

"Sue is here," I warned him. Alice was going to have to buy him some proper pajamas.

"I should put some better clothes on, then," he mumbled, wandering off again.

Seth and Leah's mom was out on the back porch with mine, talking about the summer and the plans for their clinic. Sue was planning on travelling all summer with the Q'wolves so that Leah wasn't the only legal adult or female with the boys, and since Mom was flying to Europe with us for only the first few concerts, she and Emily were going to continue the work for the women's health center.

I refilled their mugs and nodded to the women. Their friendship reminded me of Alice and Bella's: one so outgoing and the other so grounded, but neither needed artificial niceties or that weird flattery that girls seemed to interact with.

Mom asked if Alice was up yet, and hinted about family dinner not being breakfast, and I said I would wake her, and poured two cups and escaped to the privacy of my room.

Alice smiled, face still on the pillow, eyes clamped shut. "That smells fantastic," she said, sighing.

She sat up and took both mugs while I stacked stray pillows on my bed and climbed back in, pulling her into my lap. Her hair was a black thistle wreck, Bella's revenge of tiny braids randomly twisted into the messy fluff, and she looked like an exotic bird in her yellow silk pajamas.

"How do you feel?" I asked, as she slurped the hot liquid.

"Like I've slept for a week."

"It's only twelve-thirty," I teased, kissing the side of her neck, smelling last night's smoke and the sleep on her skin.

"What?" she gasped. "Crap! Is Quil still here? I promised I would order him some make-up that would read better on stage than his homemade war-paint goop, and oh, I have to call Ben! I need to get the T-shirt graphic for the website before Monday, and Emmett needs his pants hemmed for graduation and Angela called twice about the footage she shot at Aro's, and if I don't shower I'm going start growing mold in strange places-"

"Alice," I laughed, "you have plenty of time!" I pulled her tighter to me, running my lips over the curl of her ear, closing my eyes to the tickle of her hair on my cheek. She wriggled, the weight of her ass doing delicious things in my lap, but the caffeine had taken hold, and she bounced out of my arms.

She sailed through the door that connected our rooms, laughing about the state of my room compared to the tidiness of her own, chattering about what she was going to wear to Em and Rosalie's commencement and asked for my opinion between two silk scarves that looked exactly the same.

"The one that matches your eyes," I said, leaning on the doorframe to watch her. She seemed pleased with my input, and looped one over the door knob and set one aside. She grabbed a fresh towel from the laundry basket on her bed, and then turned to look at me.

"Want some company?" I asked, trying to seem casual, while I watched her closely.

She froze, and the smile faded from her eyes. She glanced at the mirror and then back to me, and then looked away. I could see the longing in her eyes, but her shoulders curled inward, hunching around her chest. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the terrycloth.

"What are you afraid of, darl?" I asked.

"Nothing," she chirped, and I folded my arms across my chest and waited.

"Everything," she whispered, closing her eyes. "I liked being sexy, you know? And I liked the way you used to look at me, and I'm so afraid I'm not… not anymore, and I don't want to look and I don't want to see your face when you first see me, trying to hide what you feel-"

I wanted to laugh that she thought she wasn't sexy, and I wanted to shake her and slap her ass for putting herself through all this misery on my account. I hadn't realized she'd not even looked in a mirror yet.

"Do you trust me?" I asked her, stepping into her room.

"Yes," she said, but the word took effort.

"Close your eyes," I said, and when she did so I took the silk scarf from the bed and wrapped it across her lids, tying it in a knot at the back of her head.

"Oh," she whispered, and her mouth moved, and I wanted to know the words she was forming, but her voice was silent. I kissed her lips. Slowly, so that she could stop me if she really wanted to, I unbuttoned her yellow top. I was surprised that my fingers shook a little as I eased it off her shoulders.

I must have made a noise, because she asked, "What?"

"It's nice to see them again," I said, grinning, and she smiled a little under the blindfold.

"How do I look?" she whispered, holding her breath.

"Well, you're a little more oranges than pears now," I said, and she exhaled with a gasp of a giggle, "and your nips look great, pretty much exactly like they used to."

Her tattoos were almost completely healed, and only a few stitches hadn't completely dissolved. The nipples still looked tender, like the fresh skin under a scraped knee, but they were the same size, shape and color as before.

"Jazz?" she asked at my silence, voice tentative and fingers fluttering toward the scarf over her face.

"Sorry. I was staring," I said, catching her hands and pulling them back down. Her grin flickered back for a second, but then was gone again.

"How- how bad are they? The scars?" she asked.

"Not bad at all," I said quickly, perhaps too quickly, because they _were_ daunting to look at. The fierce scars slicing her pretty skin looked painful, even if she said they rarely hurt anymore, and I was grateful for the blindfold that let me stare without her knowing.

"You know how when you make those dresses that are tight, where the front has pieces that curve from here-" I brushed my fingertip from her armpit, over her breast and down to her ribs "-to here?"

"Princess seams," she said.

"Yes. You now have princess seams." It was the right thing to say; her smile crooked up on one side, the Cullen signature smirk, and her spine relaxed. "The lines are sort of purplish-pink, and in some places they're thin and still hard, but you can see where they're beginning to fade and smooth out. They're sort of blurry and lighter."

I ran my finger over one of the scars, watching for her reaction. "Can you feel that?"

"At the beginning and the end," she whispered. "Not in the middle.

I nodded, a little glad that she couldn't see my disappointment. Most of the stuff we read said that it would take a long time for her nerves to reconnect, and that the odds of her recovering all the sensation back would be low. The younger and healthier the woman was, though, the better at regaining feeling eventually, and the doctors had been so amazed at her recovery and fast healing that I had hoped for too much, too soon.

I touched her again, spiraling outward from the tips.

"There," she gasped, and shivered. I chuckled. The sides of her boobs had always been sensitive to a light touch. I stroked her skin again, this time pressing, watching them move in a fascinating manner.

"I can feel that. The pressure," she said, and there was a faint blush to her cheeks that made me wish I thought to do this sooner.

"There's a little dimple, here," I said, laying my thumb into a divot in the scar.

"Massage is supposed to help the scars from tightening," she said, and I squeezed, tentatively, afraid to hurt her.

"That feels good!" she groaned, startling me. "Harder."

I worked her with my fingers, caught up in her reactions that told me how to touch her again, some things different, some things the same, all kinds of interested in the way her skin felt and her response to my hands.

"Do they feel okay?" she asked, breathless, and I laughed and grabbed her hand and brought it to the erection that was tenting my pajamas, and she giggled and felt me up with both hands, a naughty game of blind-man's-bluff.

"They feel soft, and kind of bouncy." I felt like the proverbial teenaged kid who had finally gotten his hands on his first pair.

I pulled her hands off me and set her palms over her breasts, and she squeezed experimentally. I watched her, kind of feeling like voyeur, but then she pouted. "It's more fun when you do it," she said.

I pushed her backward a few steps, onto the hardwood flooring toward her dance mirrors, and then spun her around by the shoulders and untied the blindfold. She stilled again, and covered herself with her hands, but she opened her eyes. I cupped my hands over hers, lacing my fingers in between, and pulled her hands away.

"Oh!" she whispered, staring. She twisted her torso in the reflection, examining from all sides, frowning occasionally, but then she caught my gaze in the glass and smiled and twirled on her toes to face me. "You still look at me like that! You know, that was my first wish on the first crane you made, that you would always look at me like that, like I was the last woman on earth, with your eyes so blue they make the sun jealous that you are mine, and I get to wake up with you and he only gets the pale sky. Which sort of infers that the sun is gay, but I think of the moon as feminine even though they always say the man in the moon. Should we do something nice with this?"

She squeezed my cock through my pajama pants, and I nodded, smiling and stupid with love and lust for her.

"Care to join me?" she asked, reclaiming the towel.

I nodded again, and she took my hand, and another towel from the basket. The wet slide of her skin against mine was fantastic and her laughter was even better, and when I lifted her she wrapped her legs around my waist and took me impossibly deep, and the earth turned around _me_ and the sun had to be envious that I could reach Heaven and he couldn't touch her.

**Alice:**  
I waved to Charlie in the kitchen and dashed up the stairs, and after yelling at Bella through the bathroom door that if she didn't hurry up with her shower I would come in and flush the toilet until there was no water pressure in the entire town of Forks, I rummaged through her closet and found clothes appropriate for the last day of school, specifically – as tradition dictates – a skirt so short it would get her sent home on any other day, and a little double-breasted jacket that did nice things to her own doubles.

She came into her room and glanced around, looking in vacant corners, and I threw the clothes at her and snatched the towel and worked on her hair as she vaguely poked at the pile of faded denim. "No coffee?" she whimpered.

"The guys are bringing some; they needed to drop another case of CDs off at the post office. Now hold still, your hair looks like you went to an orgy in a hurricane."

She grimaced at the assembled clothes. "Boy shorts and no bra?" she asked.

"I thought I'd mix it up a little," I teased. Although Bella's odd habit of going femme commando was incredibly amusing because my twin brother would get all jack-rabbit twitchy and walk around with a scowl on his face and his hands oh-so-casually covering his crotch, I couldn't have her flashing anyone else, and in that skirt she would.

Charlie called up to say goodbye, and I was relieved that he wouldn't be seeing what we were wearing today. I'd deliberately left my spring coat on, hiding the strappy dress that perched on top of my cleavage, just barely covering my scars.

"I'm going to miss this," I said, pulling the covers up on her bed and mentally making a note of what I should buy her to take on tour; she would need a few more things that would pass for formal attire, and some cross body bags that wouldn't spill when she did; sunglasses and maybe an oversized jacket with a hood that she could hide in.

"What? Meeting before school?" she asked. "We still have next year. I promise I'll wear all the mascara you tell me."

I said nothing, feeling sad.

"You don't think we'll go to school next year, do you?" she demanded.

I shook my head. "I don't see how. The album is already all over iTunes, and Esme had to change the number on the house phone twice, and you saw what happened with our cell phones, and then the fiasco with the paparazzi at graduation, though the look on the guy's face when Emmett walked straight up to him was funny!" I handed her a tube of mascara and waved to the boys out the window as they pulled up and then pulled out again to let Charlie's cruiser out of the driveway.

We trooped into the Volvo, and Edward kissed her and handed her the cup of coffee, the steamed milk foaming out the sippy hole like pre-ejaculate, and Bella swallowed in utter bliss.

"I think I just came a little," she moaned.

The car lurched as Twin had a bit of a seizure in the driver's seat, and I sloshed my latte down my front.

"Girl has no filter," Jasper sighed, and leaned down to lick the coffee off my breasts.

School was a whirlwind of yearbooks, scandalous clothes and final goodbyes, and by the end of the day, I let Jessica play Breaking Dawn bodyguard and she got Mike and Tyler to keep the freshmen off of us, and I even hugged Lauren Mallory and told her that she had a lifetime backstage pass. I wasn't too sentimental about it all – most everyone I liked would be at the kickoff in Olympia the next weekend.

It was exhausting though, and on the way home we were silent, listening to Calexico's "Two Silver Trees," and I put my head on Jasper's thigh and got lost in the pretty tune, ignoring their murmurings about fancy cars in the driveway, opening my eyes only after we were ensconced in the garage with the door closing behind us.

Esme and Angela Weber met us in the kitchen. Ang looked like her eyes were about to explode from behind her funky glasses, and my stepmother looked as flustered as I'd ever seen her.

"We have guests," Esme said, pulling the ends of the scarf that I had looped around my neck to the front, covering my cleavage. "They want to talk to you all. Especially Alice."

I recognized the tall platinum blonde sitting in the living room, but not the man she was talking to. He was European looking, and his suit that would have rivaled any of Aro's.

"Alice," Charlotte said, holding out her hand for a feminine shake, "I'd like to introduce you to the head of the marketing division of Porsche. We want to talk to you about your song."

* * *

What would you name the awkward elephant in the room?


	20. Betwixt

Quite a few of you would name the awkward elephant Fred or George. Twins much, fandom? I found it interesting that almost all of us saw him as male.

Speaking of which, the AwkWard_Contest has some amazing entries. Go read them!

ElleCC beta'd this mess and Stephenie owns what I don't.

**

* * *

Jasper:**  
"What's wrong?" Alice asked again.

"Nothing," I said again, and yet again, quiet fell in the tiny automobile, dissolving in the new car smell of fresh enamel and leather. It was an insidious smell, addictive, drawing one deeper, like the unvoiced argument festering in its silence. "Overcome" by Tricky droned through the exquisite sound system, adding to the subtle discord.

"You should give it a try," she said, as she had before. "It's kind of amazing to drive. It sticks to the road like you wouldn't believe-"

"I'm good. You have fun," I said, leaning my head back, shifting my legs to find a proper ass-groove in the seats, fully aware that my discomfort was of my own choosing.

It didn't matter that I wasn't looking at her; everything about her was etched into my eyelids. She was wearing a dark green top, and black pants that were short and slit on the sides, and strappy shoes with heels so high I wondered how she could drive in them. She was all slick and streamlined, French film noir make-up and perfectly styled smooth hair, and it was hard not to stare at her, so I deliberately looked away. She looked like a college girl: rich, older, out of my league. I wondered if people passing us thought I was a hitchhiker, in my plain tee-shirt and faded jeans, a hard luck case with shaggy hair riding in the imported car with the fancy woman.

"It's really responsive," she murmured, and I wondered if that was an Alice-insult aimed at the pisstivity I was trying only haphazardly to hide.

"Did you know that Porsche is owned by Volkswagen?" I asked, as she took another breath to continue, knowing that I was being an asshole, but saying it anyway.

"I wonder if they'll change the logo?" she said, ignoring my rudeness, touching the shield set into the steering wheel. "This is prettier than the VW symbol-"

"You'd like the Wolfsburg symbol," I cut her off again, pulling up some esoteric trivia just to get in the last word, though it didn't make me feel any better. This time she let the silence sink its jaws into the leather interior.

_She deserves something nice,_ I thought to myself. _Stop being a dickhead and fix this._ I searched my brain for a phrase to write in a crane that would make her laugh, but came up with nothing that said what I felt.

We pulled into the VIP parking of the amphitheatre, and I unfolded my legs out of the car, feeling awkward on my feet after the smooth ride. Alice gave me a tight smile, and then bounced off to talk with Rosalie and Bella, who had followed us in from the hotel. I ground my teeth, irritated that she'd been so restrained with me and so easy with them, and doubly annoyed that it was my own fault.

"Jasper, thank Christ y'here," Liam's unmistakable brogue rasped out over the parking lot. "I'm surrounded by too many effing girls."

I shook his hand. Siobhan was talking to Mom, and the Denali Coven was grouped around the hippy festival dude in charge, backs turned to us. Charlotte and Angela were talking a mile a minute with Bella, and Rosalie and Aro's strange wife were sizing each other up in silence. There _were_ a lot of girls.

"Em and Ed and Dad are on their way," I said, sympathizing. "Ben should be around here somewhere."

"Short kid? Asian? He and Peter went off for a power supply for a laptop."

"You know Peter?"

"Sure," the Irishman said, grinning, showing off the startling lack of a left incisor. "He managed our first tour."

"When was that?" I asked, surprised.

"Ten years ago. He wasn't much older than you, and took us across the globe twice before we settled down here."

"Why did you quit?" I asked, before I realized my curiosity might be rude.

"Eh, wee Maggie, you know? She needed steady schooling and some mates her age for longer than a week."

"What was it like? Touring?" I asked, feeling like I was interrogating the man, but his easy honesty was refreshing in comparison to the dance of business politics I'd been a part of, recently.

"It was grand," he said, his eyes unfocusing into a memory. "We met so many people, and they were right perfect, y'know? We'd set up with a local band to open, and most often we'd play a little with them, before we went into our set. We'd bounce the tunes around, even in languages we didn't ken at all, and half the time it was complete bollocks, but it was always good music."

"That sounds like it would be a blast," I said, and for some reason my face grew hot as he looked at me, eyes sharp and knowing.

"You're for doing it the other way, though, with the record company and the sponsors, no?"

"We leave next week with the Volturi Guard." I looked up from my boots, and met his stare. "We didn't sign with anybody, though. We're still on our own."

I didn't understand why it was so important to me that he know this, and I found myself glaring at Alice's yellow sports car.

"It's a fine car, lad, and there's no shame in sellin' a tune," Liam said, and I was startled that he could read me so well.

I shoved my fists in my pockets, wanting to change the subject to ask if the weather would warm up before tonight or how about them Seahawks or if he'd ever met Van Morrison-

"Ah, then," he said. "It's your soul you're not wanting to sell, is it?

"_My_ soul is fine," I said, unable to keep the glum tone from my voice, watching Alice smile politely at something the festival director said, her feet still and her fingers laced together in front of her as if to cage her wild energy.

"Laddie, she _is_ your soul. Any idjit can see that."

"Jasper!" Santiago slapped me between the shoulder blades.

I turned around, and the short man rocked backward on his lifted motorcycle boots.

"How're you doing, _partner?_" His stress on the word voiced his displeasure about the new tour arrangement, though his face was friendly.

"Good," I said, cautiously. "Almost packed."

"Jesus, is that Alice?" he asked, staring. "I didn't recognize her. She cleans up _nice_!"

"Yeah," I said, not looking in her direction.

"I caught her commercial, pretty fucking clever of you guys to write a brand name jingle." His antagonism was barely held below the surface of his smile, and I searched for something to say that would diffuse his jealousy.

"Well, you were the one who said shorter songs got the most airplay," I improvised.

"And I was right, wasn't I?" He didn't give me time to confirm or contradict his ego, just pulled his hood up with an exaggerated shiver at the late spring chill, and spun on his heels to stick his nose in my sister's tits. I watched him leave, hoping Emmett would show up before I jeopardized the entire summer with my need to break his face.

"You're spending three months over the drink with _that_ bloke?" Liam asked.

"_I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly," _I quoted.

"Yeats grafted monkey clackers to his nob, y'know. I wouldn't be sayin' his words, if I were you."

**Alice:**

Rosalie shook her head at me, eyes snapping with impatience, and I cinched the strap tighter, and began again, trying to keep from lagging the beat with the weight of my own arms. I'd been building up my endurance for the past week, even taking the guitar on the ferry to Vancouver where we filmed the commercial, which was a ridiculous process – fifteen minutes of me in half a car on jack stands in front of a green screen with an industrial fan in my face, and a man yelling, "Smile, Alley-cat," every thirty seconds, and two hours later I was the owner of a new Porsche 911 and Angela had a full four-year scholarship to some film school in New York, and five days after that we were on television, the rough footage of us all over Bella's truck imposed over another shot from above of a yellow car winding down a curvy road somewhere in Europe I'd never been, all dreamlike, and then the final shot of me, looking like a movie star, the teenage fantasies all grown up. I was surprised that it went up so fast, but Charlotte just laughed and said I ought to see how fast ad production companies worked during election years; new pieces were filmed, edited and broadcasted within hours. We threw the single up on-line and it took off like crazy, and _Tropic of Virgo _was selling almost as fast as the wall that was building itself in silence between Jasper and me.

"Miss Alice?" A young woman dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck approached me, her voice deferential and polite. I recognized her from November, when she had called me Al and elbowed me in laughter. Rosalie and Emmett stopped playing, and Edward called to one of the booth technicians with a question about a level on his keyboard, while Seth looked over his shoulder, a constant shadow flitting from Jasper to my brother during sound check.

"Where do you want to wear this?" The lighting designer held up a battery pack, and then proceeded to roll it into a condom. Seth stared at her with his mouth open.

"Dude," Edward elbowed him, but explained with a grin, "the packs can't get sweaty or they'll short out."

"Ah," Seth said, blushing redder than Bella, but maintaining a serious stance. "Do you have to squeeze the air out of the tip?"

Everyone on the stage burst out laughing, except for Jasper, who watched me, as he had for the past four days. I was almost more comfortable with Angela's constant camera lens than I was with my boyfriend's dark surveillance.

"We don't need the spotlight," I told the woman, when I recovered from my giggles.

"Oh." Her face fell. "I gelled some gobos on a wheel to make colored patterns, if you change your mind."

"We're a group, not one star with back up," I said firmly, raising my voice to be heard over a sudden squeal from Rosalie's amp.

Edward gave me a strange look and pulled the woman aside, as Jazz grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. He stared at me, eyes hard as stones, but when I reached up to him I winced from the strain of my tired arms on the healing muscles of my chest, and his face twisted up. He slid the guitar strap from my torso, and walked away, jerking on the cord to unplug it from the purple amp.

"She's done," he said to the stage manager, and I stared after him, feeling little and stupid and alone, but his back was to me as he continued: "Let's move onto the bridge song at the end."

Bella and Edward left the group and moved off the stage, and Seth followed them out as Jacob and Leah walked on – Jake on guitar and Leah carrying sticks – and Emmett pounded the drums and the lyrics on the first verse of "I Know What I Am" by the Band of Skulls. Leah challenged him with the second as Jake and Rosalie traded the rhythm licks and the solos, and midway through, Emmett launched off the drum set and Leah took his seat, fully establishing her and Jake in their new positions in the Sam-less Q'wolves, and then Em and Rose left the stage as Embry and Jazz did a similar trade out and then Quil stomped in, pounding on a huge tribal drum that made the stage shake. I wondered if he would have any hearing left in two years, but it was going to be a fun show, especially when the lights were up and they wore their tribal paint.

I walked backstage, avoiding the eyes of the Denali Coven girls who had been excruciatingly nice all day. Their outfits were themed even for sound check – leopard print and brocade, a sort of witchy Josie and the Pussycats – and I was envious of their style and how none of them seemed to be taken less seriously for their sexy clothes, and that they even dressed up to perform at all; five of the six members of Breaking Dawn refused to go on stage in anything but jeans.

I had a weird wave of déjà vu wash over me and I wondered if the awkward anticipation that buzzed with the flickering light tubes in the hall would precede every concert, or if part of my anxiety was waiting for Jasper to bust my ass for being so stubborn about the damned guitar.

"I saw your car commercial," said a young voice behind me, and I turned to meet Jane's glower. She wore a printed silk chiffon dress and patterned tights, with ballet flats laced up her ankles and a heavy scowl across her blond brows. "My friends don't believe I know you."

"Well, should we take a picture?" I asked her.

"No. You don't look like you." She wrinkled her nose at me. "Why are you dressed like that?"

"Like what?" I hedged, and then felt guilty as she rolled her eyes in disappointment with me. She was a smart kid and didn't deserve to be underestimated; I knew how much that sucked as much as anyone. "So people will see me as a musician, not just a decoration."

"So being famous means you can't dance anymore?"

My stomach dropped as she voiced the choice I'd unconsciously made yesterday, when I'd packed dark clothes that clung rather than flowed and impractical heels, aiming for the refined look at the end of the advertisement rather than the messy hair and frivolous dress of the beginning. Then her frown changed to concern as she looked past me.

"What's wrong with Seth?" she asked.

I turned to look at the boy, who had turned as still and white as marble, and I groaned internally, because he had done so well over the past few weeks. Jasper was at the far end of the hall, talking to Ben and Angela, but my low call to Edward had him at Seth's side instantly.

"Who is that?" Jane pointed in the direction that the upset boy was staring, to a figure walking quickly through the backstage area, head moving from side to side as if she was looking for someone. I recognized the shaggy white sheepskin jacket and the redhead's ponytail, and wondered what Victoria was doing here.

I felt disoriented, and words and images from a week ago spiraled in my head, swirling fragments that settled on Bella talking about Emily having light colored fur on her hands, and Seth saying "-and orange-ish."

Victoria turned back from the hallway, face snarling with frustration as she spotted Jasper, Ang and Ben blocking her path, and stalked past me.

"Alice!" Edward yelled. He met my gaze with furious eyes, trying to tell me something, and glanced deliberately at Bella, and I knew he was thinking about last fall, when Victoria had attacked his girlfriend in revenge for his turning her boyfriend in to the cops.

She had assaulted Emily for the same reasons, I realized; Sam had dropped the bomb that James had the drugs in his guitar case. But there was another who played a part in the arrest, which meant that Victoria had one more score to settle. Jasper had been the one to pass the info from Sam to Edward, and in revenge for hurting her love, she would attack his.

Me.

Victoria's face snapped to Edward's at his voice, and she spun around, her gaze sliding over me and lingering on Jane and then beyond, still searching, not recognizing me in my subdued clothes and tamed hair.

I darted toward her when she looked away, age-old female instinct driving my hand to her ponytail and jerking it straight down.

She crashed to concrete, arms flailing, and Twin rushed in, shoving me out of reach of her grappling hands and then grabbing her feet to twist her onto her stomach before she could stand. He knelt on her back while she writhed and screamed, trying to heave him off. Bella jumped forward, but Emmett grabbed her before she could get close, while Rosalie spoke urgent words into her phone.

Edward struggled as Victoria began to thrash, unable to hold her body down and avoid her feet, but then Seth inched forward, face pale but eyes resolute, hands gripping a coil of amp cable.

"Throw it to me!" Edward yelled, trapping one of her legs and pulling backward, but the boy did better than that, wrapping the cord around her foot and then snagging the other when she tried to kick it off, tying it tight around her ankles. He sat on her feet, and Edward grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her back, pinning her down and using the coat to bind her arms. A wad of cash, held by a rubber band, tumbled from the pocket and rolled across the floor to stop at my toes.

"What the fuck just happened?" asked Jasper, looking from me to Edward and back again.

"You said the eff-word!" Jane gasped, and I collapsed into inappropriate hysteria as the tension of the day popped and bubbled over like champagne.

Charlie and Sue shoved through the crowd that had formed, and stared down in shock at the two boys holding the girl immobile and me sitting on the floor, rocking with laughter.

"I think we found your mountain lion, Chief Swan," I said, still giggling.

**Jasper:**  
I strode out the door around to the front as Emmett walked on stage, beating a Celtic drum in time to Liam's fiddle. The crowd recognized him and went a little crazy, but Siobhan grinned and kept singing.

"Jasper, what are you doing here? You go on any minute!" Carlisle frowned at me.

"I need your help with something," I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

He stood, and we crossed the amphitheatre, walking around the back to the tech entrance, but at the door, I stopped.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

He looked at me in surprise. "Because you're my son, and you obviously have something on your mind."

"No, I mean, why are you in Forks? The doctors in Seattle all seemed to think you were this rock star surgeon who could work anywhere in the world. Why aren't you at Johns Hopkins or the Mayo Clinic?"

"Ah." He smiled slowly, and looked off in the distance. "I like working with people, Jasper. The more of a big shot you are, the more political your world becomes, and the business of maintaining your status as the best actually distances you from your cases. I'd much rather perform an appendectomy on the waitress from the diner whom I know by name than write some journal article about the latest machine that keeps me from even stepping into the same room with the patient."

"_To thine own self be true?"_ I asked, opening the stage door.

"Yes." He walked beside me as I led him to the corner where Ben was downloading video from Angela's camera. "Having second thoughts about the tour?"

"I need you to see something." I nodded to Ben, and he drew up a window.

We watched as the screen filled with an image of the same room we were in, and a slow pan took us to another corner where our equipment lay stacked against a wall. Tech folk and musicians hustled in and out, arms loaded with cords and instruments, calling to each other in the universal backstage language.

A small man walked up to the equipment, his face partially hidden by a raised sweatshirt hood. He nodded casually to one of the crew, obviously making the routine electrical count of instrument to cable to amp to power supply. Then he knelt by the smallest amplifier, seeming to check a switch, but then turned it over. Slipping a small knife from his pocket, the man popped off the bottom plate, peeked into the interior and snapped it shut, apparently satisfied with whatever he saw. He flicked the toggle again in a showy test. He stood, rocking back on his stacked heels and turned, the noise of his motorcycle boots on the concrete lingering after him as he walked out of the tiny screen.

"What's in that amp?" demanded Carlisle.

"I haven't looked. James' missing drugs, I'm guessing," I said. "It explains why Victoria was here, and had so much money."

Ben looked at me, dark brows pinched in thought. "But what does he have to do with it?" he asked, gesturing to the screen.

"I think James was the runner between him and Laurent."

"So why would he leave the drugs there?"

"I don't know. An insurance policy, maybe?" I said. "A smoking gun in his pocket in case we become a liability, not an asset?"

Carlisle drew a deep breath and turned to me, his jaw hard, searching my face for a long time before he asked, "What do you want to do?"

I looked away from him to where Alice stood in the backstage wing, watching us talk. She reached a hand out to me, and my heart chastised my feet for not walking toward her.

"I want to make music," I said, staring at her as the invisible wall tumbled down, no match for my need for her and the warmth in her eyes.

"Then go," he said, gripping my shoulder and shoving me in her direction.

I stumbled forward, catching her up in my arms, and she laughed and pressed up against me, and I held her and spun around until I couldn't think straight.

"What was that all about?" she asked, running her hands through my hair, calming me down.

"I'll tell you later. Dad's taking care of it. You need to change."

"What?" she asked, frowning up at me.

Rosalie stepped forward, pulling the little hat off my girlfriend's head and holding out the dress Alice had planned to wear before Santiago had started his manipulative bullshit in order to get her to play the guitar and bring the mini amp with her. Edward handed Bella the light sensor pack for the follow spot, and she jerked up Alice's shirt to tie it next to her mic batteries.

As the song ended, my younger stepbrother walked on stage, singing:

"_Gentlemen, it is my duty, to inform you of one beauty, though I ask of you a favor not to seek her for a while-"_

And he gave the opening line to "The Queen of Argyle" – a lilt that Liam said could pass for Cork – and Alice rolled her eyes as Bella's jaw dropped while she stepped on her own toes. The audience roared, recognizing both Edward and our friends' most popular song, and I grinned at Alice as she glared at me again.

"You don't own me," she said, and I kissed her, because her fists in my shirt were pulling me toward her, not pushing away.

"No, darl, you own me," I said, staring deep into her eyes. "But I lead this band, and we need your ass all over that stage, not stuck in a corner struggling with a guitar you can barely hold."

Rose moved close to shield us from other eyes backstage, and I reached for the buttons on her pants while Bella knelt and struggled with the tiny buckles on the straps of the ridiculous shoes. Alice fought at us both, smacking at my fingers and twisting away from Bella's hands at her ankles.

I moved my hands to her hair, cradling her head in my palms, and I pressed my cheek to hers, desperate.

"Please, Alice," I whispered into her ear. "Dance for me."

And she stilled, moving only to kiss me, hot mouth and wet tongue, and my heart slammed against my ribs with relief at her surrender as though I was the one conquered.

My sister elbowed me off her, protecting the mic pinned to Alice's hair as she ripped the shirt off her body and threw the dress over her head. She turned, grabbing her red guitar, and stalked on the stage, already playing while Emmett stepped up to his set. Siobhan opened up on a flute, and Alice kissed me once more and ruffled her hair into its usual mess of feathers, and twirled out onto the stage. The applause rang out for her as much as Edward's words on one of our favorite covers, "Under the Milky Way Tonight," Seven Nations-style, all Celtic blues and fantastic with Liam wailing on fiddle on the bridge.

When the song ended, I took Bella's hand and led her to Edward's piano bench, and the Irishman yelled, "That's how it's feckin' done!" as I passed by, unaware that his mic was still on, and by the thunder of the crowd I figured that was as good an introduction as any.

* * *

What is your dream car?


	21. Toujours

We are diverse in our car-love: Porsches, Challengers and Mini Coopers top the list. I'm with Emmett.

ElleCC held my hand through this strangeness.  
Stephenie owns their names.

Thank you for reading.  
_

* * *

Juin_  
**Alice:**  
I blinked at the sunlight, and the bright warmth melted the shadows and musk left by last night's late wine and midnight dancing. I was alone in the little white room, but the tall doors to the balcony were open, and I could hear the strains of a mandolin played between the morning noises of slow traffic on cobbled streets, business greetings and the cry of a distant siren, distinctly European with its two-toned whine. I also smelled coffee, so I wrapped up in the corner of the sheet and walked to the terrace, trailing the bed linens behind me like the train of an evening gown.

Jasper was sitting on one of the stiff wire chairs, barefoot and in jeans and a white t-shirt, playing a haphazard tune. He looked out of place, the golden American boy, too fresh with rebellion and honesty to settle into the ripe patina of Paris and her secrets.

_"Bonjour, m'cher-"_ he drawled, his French pure Cajun roughneck, and I sort of wanted to take his pants off on the balcony and lick the sunshine off his skin until he threw his head back and groaned my name, but instead I sat at the little marble-topped table, where two coffees waited, one black and the other au lait, cooling in the morning air next to a large paper crane folded out of pastel marbled paper. I sipped at the caffeine, feeling it warm my blood the way the sun warmed my face, and I watched him play, getting lost in his eyes and his slight smile as his fingers pulled the melody from the strings.

"What number is this one?" I asked, picking up the origami bird.

"Nine hundred ninety-nine."

There was something inside that rattled; at his nod I opened it. In the center of the square of creased paper lay another origami crane, tiny and gleaming with the warm silver of white gold, suspended by a wing on a delicate chain, so perfect it almost looked like it had been folded from a sheet of beaten metal.

"One thousand," he murmured, and I wanted to ask what he had wished for, but I knew I would cry, and this morning was about clear sky and coffee and music and the laughter in his eyes, not tears in mine. I slipped the chain around my neck and caught the link with the clasp, and the pendant lay in the V under my collarbones, just above the swell of my breasts.

I reached for the sheet that was threatening to slide down my torso and expose my naked chest to the rooftops of Montmartre, and at the breeze and the movement of the fabric, my left nipple ruched up hard, sending a magnetic jolt through skin, polarizing my brain. I stared down in shock at the sudden sensation, at the stiff tip thrusting against the sheet, and then gasped as the right slowly contracted, awoken by the jangling alarm of the other, the nerves remembering their way under my skin, as if feeling through a fog of amnesia.

I covered my breasts with my hands, pressing with my palms in hopes to make sense of hot and cold, swelling and constriction, pleasure and pain. The tears did come then, as the conflicting sensations tore through my skin, and my heart pounded, elated that I was feeling, that the feminine nerves were still there, not dead, only disconnected and dormant, waiting to wake.

I wasn't aware Jasper had stopped playing until he spoke my name. I looked up at him, not understanding his grin or his wary eyes flicking to the neighboring windows across the narrow street. He stood, linking a finger through both coffee cups and nodding to the double doors back to our room, and I shuffled through, the sheet tangling in my legs as I clutched it to my chest. He set the mandolin and the cups down, moving carefully, as if not to frighten me, and I wanted to laugh or maybe scream, but then he wrapped his hands around my ribcage and drew the sheet down 'til it hung low on my hips and threatened to fall to the floor. He brushed a knuckle down my right breast, along the curve of my cleavage, and I whimpered because I felt very little, and I wondered if it was a daydream, all in my head because I wanted it so badly, but then he repeated the touch on the outside of the left, trailing his fingertip near the red tip, and electricity followed like a shadow, and it rose up again, wanting, and the other tightened in sympathy. He slid to his knees and kissed the skin he had just stroked, and then his mouth settled over the aching peak.

I moaned at the heat and winced when the suction became too much, but laughed anyway and squirmed as the shivers slid low to my belly and his hand followed, warm palm and hot fingers finding my body's wet angst, and I was instantly panting, nerves overloaded, and I shoved him to the bed, jerking at the buttons on his jeans, shivering and frantic, climbing on his lap and kneeling over him to take him inside-

"Shh, Alice," he whispered, wrapping his arms around me and holding me still, "breathe."

His hands moved, light tickling fingers exploring from spine to wet cleft where we were joined, and then he cupped my thighs and lifted, rocking with an easy rhythm, thrusting deep and slow, watching my face as I lost all sense of time and place and self, existing only for this, for him. He smiled when I gasped his name, swelling impossibly hard as he worked me over him, cradling me in his arms as I fell apart with the _petite mort_ of release, his eyes closing only when the same delightful agony overtook him as well.

"Happy Birthday," he whispered, touching the precious crane that hung over my heart like a kiss and a wish and a promise.

**Jasper:  
** "Jazz, can you run a warm up with Bella?" Alice asked. "She's been staring at Edward's chocolate cake and giggling hysterically, though I have no idea why; I mean the thing is huge, Dad must have gotten his numbers mixed up when he ordered it from the bakery, it could feed forty people, but I think she's one C-sharp from an anxiety attack. Peter announced 'ten 'til places' three minutes ago and Esme called to say that there is a visitor we absolutely have to see before we go on, and Rosalie is going to need more spare picks than she has and they're back in the dressing rooms and Siobhan says she gave Maggie the key. Edward is in the stage left wing with Emmett; the piano is still on blocks and no stage hand is willing to lift more than fifty pounds so they have to do it themse –mmphm…"

I kissed her, hands in her hair and bending her to my mouth, my will, my excitement, but then she was kissing back, teasing tongue and laughing whispers, nonsense words like "yeah," and "want," and "love," her hands in the hair at my neck, and I tried to pull away before I had to have her again, right then, or go on stage with a rampant hard-on, but a commotion at the door interrupted our moment with swearing in several languages.

"Yes, Jasper Hale is a personal friend of mine," a voice from outside argued. "I said that twice already. Christ, no wonder everyone hates the French; how can a country this beautiful spawn such stick-up-the-ass people?"

A knock sounded on the door.

"Mademoiselle Alys? The is a woman called Mildred here, she says she has a need to borrow a lipstick-"

Alice squealed and pulled the door open, hugging Millie V. before she even could step through the doorway, and then hugged the woman next to her, exclaiming over her long, handmade coat.

"You must be the weaver!" she laughed, and the woman nodded with a shy smile and wide eyes.

"Well, Jasper," Millie said, looking up at me with her hand on her hips, "I must say I like this opening act much better than the kid in the blue jeans ad. He's got a good voice, but he seems like he might be an egotistical little prick."

_You have no idea_, I didn't say aloud. Santiago had been vicious when we confronted him.

"The Volturi Guard decided to postpone their tour," I said diplomatically, hugging her.

Rosalie snorted.

"Yeah, because their label threatened to drop them if they didn't stop and do some major damage control," Alice said, snickering. "It's hard to tour when you're in rehab to get out of a possession charge. But Peter convinced us to go ahead without them, though it didn't take a whole lot of arm twisting, honestly, and the coolest part is that there were hardly any refunds on the tickets! Though I'm sure Emmett would say the best part is that he doesn't have to pull Santiago's face out of Rose's tits anymore. Would you like some cake?"

Millie pulled off her crocheted cap and rubbed her fingertips over the fine hair that coated her head. It looked like a baby's scalp, with white-blond curls barely an inch long. She caught me looking and slapped her hat back on her head, wrinkling her nose at my grin.

Peter called three minutes, and Millie and her friend left to go sit with Mom and Carlisle, and I ran a few scales with Bella, trying not to get irritated at my brothers for taking so long.

"They'll be here," my girlfriend said calmly, adjusting Bella's mic cord.

Edward and Emmett burst into the room, out of breath, and Alice chastised them for cutting it so close and getting "mussed" before they'd even gotten on stage.

"Next time, we hire piano movers," Ed said, panting.

"Nah, it's a good workout!" Em flexed his shoulders, and then beat air sticks in a tympani crescendo.

"Are you going to be able to sing?" I asked Edward, as he swallowed half a bottle of water in one draught between gasps for air.

"I'll be fine," he said. "Unless you want to open it?"

I rolled my eyes at him, and dug in the case for the peg to my upright.

"Seriously," my best friend said. "You know the words."

"Fuck off," I said, laughing.

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice, fucker. Your voice hasn't cracked for months."

I stood, nearly knocking over Emmett's high hat tripod, staring at Edward in surprise.

He smirked at me, all cocky-bastard crooked, and I wanted to tell him he was full of shit, but I didn't want to jinx it either, so I settled for flipping him off. He laughed at me, and said, "Tomorrow night, then."

"It's time," my sister announced.

Alice kissed me again, and laughed when I growled with my immediate response, slipping her hands between our lips when I tried to return it. Then she slid her fingers down my neck to the hollow between my collarbones, and kissed me there, too.

"_Je t'aime_," she whispered, and then spun away onto the stage, skirts swirling around her thighs, a whirlwind of energy and life and laughter, and I followed her, leading the band on stage as the curtain rose.


End file.
